IT WAS the end of era in January 1985 as sweet shop Souch's announced it was closing to make way for a hair salon.

Customers walking into the popular St Clement's store were transported to a bygone age.

There was hardly a plastic wrapper to be seen in the old-fashioned emporium. Instead, sweets and chocolates, displayed in jars around the shop were weighed out and sold in paper bags.

Old-style favourites such as aniseed balls, sherbet lemons, pear drops and gob stoppers were just as popular in 1985 as the had been in the 1950s , according to owner Eunice Primer and her son Richard.

But sweet-toothed shoppers were left looking for a new place to find their childhood favourites after the pair revealed they were shutting up the shop, which had sold sweets for 150 years.