One of Ledbury's oldest family businesses, J C Smith and Son, Photographer, will close the doors on its Homend base after almost 85 years next Friday (January 21).

Roy Smith, 69, the son of founder James Crosbie Smith, is calling it a day after 53 years behind the lens.

Memories include one Easter in the early 1950s when he and his father photographed their record total of seven weddings in a single day.

Less happily, he has attended a number of bookings only to find those weddings had been cancelled without warning.

The Albert Road resident will still pick up his camera if required for occasional weddings and portrait bookings and remains the keeper of a unique photographic record of Ledbury life, stretching back to the 19th Century.

Mr Smith is also well known for his witty cartoons of local characters, which he says he mainly draws to pay his golfing subscriptions.