A COWLEY shopkeeper who ran a well-known business for more than 30 years has died at the age of 81.

Grahame Hopkins took over the family business of Hopkins of Cowley – which was an ironmonger and hardware store based in Hollow Way – in 1962.

The business had been started in 1920 by his grandparents when they moved to Oxford from the Welsh valleys and set up a grocery store at 117 Hollow Way.

Over time it expanded into neighbouring premises and, by the time Mr Hopkins took over from his late father in the 1960s, it had become a hardware store.

Before that Mr Hopkins had run another family shop in Magdalen Road called Otam (Oxford) Ltd.

Otam was also a hardware store and ironmongers that that had been established in 1943.

After taking over the two businesses he merged them in the late 1970s making them one company called Hopkins of Oxford and closing down the Magdalen Road shop.

Mr Hopkins grew the business, which had 45 employees at its peak, until he sold it in 1995.

The premises were then turned into flats.

Grahame Hopkins was born at the Oxford Maternity Home in Museum Road on May 31, 1931.

He grew up in Cowley and attended Magdalen College School until he was 18.

He then served in the Royal Air Force in Hong Kong during his national service.

When he returned to Oxford in the mid-1950s he began helping his father with the family business.

At a dance in the Town Hall in 1957 he met Pat Maule. They married two years later.

As well as being a shopkeeper he was a keen sports fan who represented Oxfordshire at cricket and captained Oxford City Golf Club in 1973.

He was a director of the golf club until 1993 and was a member of the Clarendon Club, an Oxford club for businessmen.

Mr Hopkins died on April 15.

He is survived by his wife, two sons Simon and Nick, and by a granddaughter, Amy.

His funeral took place on Thursday, May 2 in St Laurence Church in Warborough, the village he had moved to in 2000.