TODAY, most of us would agree that sport and smoking don’t mix, but that wasn’t always the case.

Elmer Cotton, Oxford’s leading sports shop, sold tobacco alongside its high quality sports equipment for more than 60 years.

Sports teams would gather in the shop after a game and light their cigars and cigarettes from a gas flame that hung from the ceiling.

It wasn’t until 1971 that the Cotton family decided to stop selling tobacco products, finally admitting that they were harmful to health.

The firm was set up in 1910 by Elmer Cotton and his brother Bill in Turl Street, in premises it has occupied ever since, although not for much longer.

It announced recently that it would be closing the store at the end of December and concentrating on online sales.

Brothers Elmer and Bill had had eventful careers before going into business together.

Elmer played cricket as a professional with the famous Jack Hobbs at the Oval and appeared in England’s amateur football team. In the First World War, he served in the Army and later the RAF.

Bill was said to have sailed the equivalent of three times round the world before he was 16 – his father was a master-mariner.

The shop the brothers took over had been a tobacconists and although it continued to serve smokers, the emphasis from the start was on supplying sports equipment, with the bywords – quality and personal service.

It stocked or could order everything an indoor and outdoor sports enthusiast needed – the Elmer Cotton boot was said at one time to be worn by all the world’s outstanding footballers. A pair cost £5 5s.

It is also credited with inventing and producing the first pair of studded rugby boots.

The shop also had a workshop, where Arthur Crosby worked for many years restringing rackets, binding cricket bats and hockey sticks, repairing croquet mallets and servicing most items of sports equipment.

Two other members of the Cotton family – Bill’s son, Elmer junior, and Elmer’s son, Brian – joined the firm in later years.

More recently, it has been run by the Barrows family. John Barrows became managing director in 1979 and his wife, Judith, took charge following his death in 2015.

She said of the move to online trading: “We’ve been here since the reign of George V. It’s not the end of Elmer Cotton – it’s a re-invention.”