A SHOPKEEPING couple are to serve their last customer after 35 years behind the counter.

Fifty-nine-year-old Derek and Jean Hughes, 58, are retiring from Baskerville Stores to spend more time with their three young grandchildren.

The pair, who will celebrate their ruby wedding in September, have sold their general store to a family from Quinton.

Mr Hughes, of the Paddocks, Low Habberley, said the shop would continue to sell alcohol, groceries and cooked meats.

However, the sale represents the end of an era for his part-time assistants, Wendy Morris and Rene Wilkes, who have worked there collectively for more than 50 years.

Sixty-year-old Mrs Wilkes is retiring, but 47-year-old Mrs Morris, who started at the shop when she was 14, will continue to work for the shop's new owners.

The shop assistant from Kidderminster's Dunnington Avenue said she worked at Baskerville Stores before she left school and would miss her current bosses.

"It's upsetting that they're leaving because they've been more like friends than anyone else, but the good thing is that we will still keep in touch," she added.

Mr Hughes, a governor of St Oswald's First School and Wolverley Sebright First School, said he would miss running the store but was looking forward to spending more time gardening.

"We don't like to look on our customers as customers, but as friends," he said.

"We have built up a nice relationship with the customers and they will, no doubt, miss us when we go because we've been good friends to them and they have to us."

The former manager of Fine Fare supermarket in Worcester added: "The shop will be maintained as it is but we feel that it wants some young blood and a refit."