THE name Elt has now been a byword for shoes in Worcester and a wide surrounding area for almost two centuries.

Old city directories show that in the early 1800s, a George Elt and a John Elt were both boot and shoe makers with workshops in Friar Street, while at the start of the 20th Century there were three Elts in the footwear business locally - brothers Harold, David and Albert Edward. Their shops were in The Shambles, High Street and Broad Street.

This Memory Lane feature, however, follows just one branch of the Elt family which has now kept alive the family involvement in the shoe trade for 130 years and through five generations.

Down the decades, it has supplied footwear to many thousands of people from all walks of life in and around the Faithful City and other Worcestershire towns, and the dynasty continues to step out vigorously today through Robin Elt Shoes.

Worcester's most famous son, Sir Edward Elgar and his wife Alice were among Elt patrons in times past, the composer once ordering ankle length glace kid button boots while Lady Elgar requested Louis heel courts with the finest chamois leather lining.

The Elt footwear dynasty has moved into its fifth and latest generation through Jenny Elt who, having taken a biology degree at Exeter University, decided that the pull of the family business was too strong to resist.

She joined her father Robin in 1991, to help perpetuate one of Worcester's best-known family names with a heritage in footwear stretching back to mid-Victorian times, well over a century ago.

The family firm was founded by Albert Elt, the son of John Elt, boot and shoe maker of Friar Street. Albert served his apprenticeship with William Webley, who had been selling "Good Boots for Ladies and Gentlemen" at No.17 The Shambles, since 1824, and he remained with his employer until buying the business from him in 1872.

Albert and his wife Eliza showed great industry and enterprise and, with trade blossoming, were able, in 1886, to acquire the next door premises which had been a pub, the Market Tavern - commonly known as The Bull's Tail because it was at the end of a passageway between The Shambles and High Street where, at the top, stood the Bull's Head pub!

Interestingly, the Market Tavern had been the childhood home of Albert's wife who, as Eliza Houghton, was the daughter of the pub's landlord.

Albert Elt also branched out into the manufacture of his own brand of boot polish, Black Bess, which was produced in the small Eltonian Works in a yard behind what is today Pratleys china emporium in The Shambles.

Albert Elt died in 1923 and the Shambles business passed to his sons, Harold and David. Another son, Albert Edward Elt and his wife Ada were already in the footwear business on their own, having bought a shoe shop at a prime location in Worcester. This was Hills Boot Store at 36 High Street, standing roughly opposite the Guildhall, where the River Island shop is today.

Albert Edward, widely known as Bert, supplied footwear to a wide spectrum of citizens, most notably, of course, Sir Edward and Lady Elgar.

Bert also gave first-hand training in the trade to his son, Albert Royston (Roy) Elt whose great boyhood chum was Jack Collins, a child of the family who ran the fish and game shop next door in High Street.

It seems the two lads would often get up to pranks such as lowering eggs on pieces of string from upstairs windows into the brims of the bowler hats of gentlemen as they passed below. When these unsuspecting gents doffed their hats to ladies, they would automatically propel the eggs, sometimes embarrassingly at passers-by!

The late Jack Collins went on to become a well-known Worcester historian.

In 1930, Bert Elt's brothers Harold and David both succumbed to ill health so, with his wife Ada, he began to help run the Elts shoe shop in The Shambles, buying out the premises totally in 1932.

It was around this time too, that Bert and Ada were joined in the business by son Roy who, after the Second World War, assumed full control of the family firm which, by then, had re-located totally to The Shambles and was a limited company - Elts (Footwear) Ltd.

Through Roy's vision too, the fairly mediocre Shambles premises were transformed into a flagship shoe store which stood out conspicuously amid a thoroughfare dominated by butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers and pubs. In fact, there were, among Roy's customers, some well-to-do ladies who initially questioned his wisdom in opening a high class footwear business in a somewhat "rough" street.

However, the venture was a great success, and Roy soon undertook a significant expansion programme. In 1947, he opened a shop for the "medium grade trade" at 4 Mealcheapen Street, calling it Hills, and followed this in 1948, by creating a prestigious branch at Orleans House in Church Street, Malvern.

Further afield, Roy also opened Elts shops at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1953, Leamington Spa in 1962 and in Hereford and at Leominster, in 1966.

Back at The Shambles too, in the early 1960s, Roy acquired the neighbouring property of Bywaters Pork Butchers at No.19 and incorporated this into the Elt's shoe shop which then filled Nos. 17,18 and 19. Large new shop windows were installed.

The firm's storage warehouse was for many years in the St Paul's area but it eventually had to go to make way for the construction of the City Walls Road.

Roy's son Robin joined the family team of his father and grandmother Ada, in 1964, and was sent to a prestigious Northampton company to learn "proper shoe making," graduating as a Bespoke Shoemaker.

From his young days, Robin Elt has fond memories of The Shambles. His grandmother Ada, acutely conscious that perseverance was a hallmark of the Victorian age, insisted on staying as a cashier in The Shambles shop ... until the age of 91, and was something of "a friendly old Tartar". Her husband Bert had died of a heart attack during the Second World War.

Robin says the Pratleys were "the greatest neighbours and a lovely lot," and other colourful characters were Bill Thompson, Charlie Eden, the Hales, the Shaplands, the Smiths, the Marshalls, and Sigley's, the sweet shop people.

"It was a fantastic place, though a bit rough, and had a thriving, vibrant community spirit."

On a less amiable note, however, Robin also recalls the "cabbage conflicts" in The Shambles.

"On Saturdays, traders were allowed to put up temporary stalls in the lay-by outside the City Arcade and would get into intense competition with the regular traders in the Market Hall. This rivalry was intensified when the pubs turned out in the afternoon and some of the traders had got tanked up a bit.

"The result was often barrages of cabbages and cauliflowers flying across the street and fisticuffs in the alleys off The Shambles," recalled Robin.

Another of his reminiscences is of an employee of ironmongers J and F Hall whose superb black and white mediaeval store stood on the corner of The Shambles and Church Street, now the site of H. Samuel, the jewellers.

"Hall's apparently had no tea-making facilities so this chap would walk right along The Shambles to a friend's shop to collect the tea in a billy-can for his colleagues. The problem, however, was that the chap, alas, had a gammy leg and limped badly, so much so that he spilt a lot of the tea before he got back to Hall's."

In 1969, Roy Elt merged his business into the Church retail division, part of the international Jones footwear group. Robin continued to manage the Worcester shop in the "hands on" Elt tradition, at the same time being responsible for a dozen or so Church shops in the locality.

He was soon appointed branded buying director for the whole Church Group but after 20 years in this challenging role, took back the family shops at Malvern and Leominster in 1991, to resume independent retailing, helped by daughter Jenny.

The Church Street shop at Malvern, now forms the head office of Robin Elt Shoes, an enterprise which has spread it wings by opening a branch at Torquay, Devon, in 1992, another in Worcester's Lychgate Precinct in 1997, and an Ecco concept store in 1998, at 50 The Shambles, on the opposite side of the street from the original family base. More recently, Robin Elt Shoes has also opened new stores in Evesham and at Totnes, Devon.

The business has just received the big boost too of being appointed to undertake all footwear buying for the Hoopers group of prestigious menswear stores including those at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire; Tonbridge Wells, Kent; Chichester, Hamshire; Wilmslow, Cheshire; Harrogate, Yorkshire and Torquay, Devon.

Overall, Robin Elt Shoes continues to proudly perpetuate a family name with one of the longest trading histories in Worcestershire.