A world of pipes, penknives and tobacco pouches, of cuckoo clocks, Toby jugs and rich, dark honeydew will shortly disappear.

Read more: Lifelong smokers are fast running out of tobacconists

Iliffe's tobacconists at Whittington Moor, Chesterfield, one of the last of the few, is at the fag-end of its life.

Anne Iliffe, the only survivor of a family that has run the business for more than half a century, is to sell the building she has lived and worked in since 1953.

Read more: Anne really knows her snuff

Failing health and frailty mean Anne, aged 74, cannot carry on with the three-shops-in-one at 2-8 Station Road, so the building is up for sale at £500,000.

And that is going to leave a lot of serious smokers with nowhere to go for their specialist smokes and associated tools, cleaners, stands and polishes.

"I'm sad to have to call it a day but it's getting too much for me now," said Anne, who started work in the family business when she was at Chesterfield High School.

"I had a fall and cracked my ribs a couple of weeks ago and I had to tell a white lie to get out of hospital. I think I might have come back too soon. I can't really go on for much longer."

Anne still busies herself in the shop finding parts for rolling machines, flints for lighters and weighing sweets for children but her days in the trade are numbered.

So why should we care about a tobacconists closing?

Smoking kills and makes people ill, it is noxious and is increasingly marginalsed in the modern world.

But for 100 years smoking was what the majority of the adult population did.

Shops like Iliffe's are a reminder of the days when smoking was a seemingly innocent pleasure and part of the social fabric of life.

We smoked on buses, at work and in bed. We smoked in restaurants on trains and at the cinema. Smoking was a 'natural' part of life, advertised in newspapers, magazines, on the radio, television and in the cinema.

Shops like Illiffe's grew to cater for our habit and to attend our every whim.

The heyday of the tobacconist is long gone and Anne's shop reflects the state of the trade today. But, despite appearances to the contrary, business is still thriving.

The closure of most of the tobacconists that were once on every high street means the shrinking demand for pipes, cigars and all the tackle that attends them has concentrated on fewer suppliers.

"We make our own trade here," said Anne with pride. "We get people in from Sheffield, Mansfield, Worksop, Buxton, Bakewell and all around this area and I do some mail order.

"There is still a good business here and I'm really sorry no-one wants to take it on. If a young family man came in with some enthusiasm and ideas it could be a decent business – it has always made a good living and still does.

"There aren't many of these places left any more and there is still a demand. Obviously it's not the way it was. There used to be my mum and dad and me and my brother John working in the shop, and we had two Saturday girls.

It has always been a busy place."

In an hour in the shop on a dead Tuesday morning half a dozen customers call in for flints, wicks, tips, snuff, rolling machines and rum-flavoured tobacco.

Children and families call in for sweets, the phone rings with an order for cigars and when Anne gets back in the shop three customers are waiting.

None spends a fortune but all want specific, specialist items they can't get anywhere else, and the old wooden till keeps tinkling.

"My dad bought this this till when we moved our business here from Newbold Road in 1953. It used to be a sweet shop called Wardell's – they made their own sweets.

"Dad didn't want to keep the sweets part because he didn't want kids in the shop! I wanted to work in the shop but he wouldn't let me leave school until I had passed all my exams. I did 'O' Levels then 'A' Levels in Latin, French, English and Maths before I left school at 18, which was quite unusual then."

Today pipes start at £7.95 and go all the way up to £120, leather cigar cases, wallets and watches sit alongside cigar cutters, lighters and Dr Plumb's Perfect Pipe Cleaners (tapered).

Soon Anne and her assistant Joan Ellis will say goodbye to all the names and gadgets from our smoking past.

Double Cherry, Liverpool Light and Black Cavendish tobaccos in jars. The British Butner Pipereamer and Savinelli's Briar Pipe Polish from a time when pipe-smoking was more of a hobby than just a blast of nicotine, with tools, accessories and maintenence duties to perform.

But, like millions of smokers, tobacconists are quitting.

Anne has her eye on a bungalow round the corner – and on keeping part of the business going.

"There are some lovely places not far from here but I haven't put a deposit down yet because I'm not sure what's going to happen to this place. I'll miss it and think I might do a bit of mail order stuff, or what will my customers do?

"It's just not that easy to give up."

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