wdnews@bepp.co.uk
After a career spanning eight decades and 13 prime ministers, possibly the longest serving butcher in Britain, Cyril Richards, is giving himself the chop.
Winston Churchill held office and the country was still at war with Germany when Cyril first addressed a butcher's block in 1944 as an 11-year-old schoolboy looking for extra pocket money.
The Devonian has finally decided to hang up his boning knives and enjoy a well-earned rest, and has earmarked July 25 – his 80th birthday – as his final day at the shop.
Carol Warren, owner of Colyton butchers, said Cyril had only been taken on as a stop-gap for a few days, but ended up staying for 12 years.
"He is old school and has been a butcher since the year dot – always very polite, dependable and willing to help," she added. "Different towns have different ways of cutting meat and you have to get used to what people want – Cyril would always do it exactly, the strings on the joints exactly an inch apart.
"He knows a fair few in the area and they like to pop in for a chat – I don't know how we are going to replace him."
The 79-year-old began by making sausages at T White and Son, in Colyton, in 1944, and admitted he had strung together "a few tonnes" since then. However, he says little has changed since he first picked up a set of knives.
Having worked in just three shops in 69 years, he is a fixture in the town, with many of his elderly customers having been old school pals.
"Dad was in the Army and mum had five of us to bring up, so if we wanted any pocket money we were encouraged to get out and earn it – I did an hour before school and two hours afterwards. When I left school at 15 I went into butchering full-time and apart from a spell of three or four months in a baker's, which I didn't like, I have been doing it ever since.
"It is my trade and I have never really known anything else. I have done it all – slaughtering, butchering, delivering and running a market stall. I have been at it for a long time and I think 80 is long enough – it's time to pack in and have a few years retirement. I have enjoyed what I have been doing."
Cyril married Eileen in 1957 and they had 50 years together, having four children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. She died, aged 76, just six months after their golden wedding anniversary, and two years after moving into a nursing home after suffering severe arthritis.
Cyril now lives in a warden-controlled flat, but still works 22 hours a week. He has decided to take it easy now and dig a few vegetables from his garden.
"I will miss the customers and the banter," he said.