Tears at breaking-up of the 'Hodgson and Hepworth family'

"It is so tragic," said Jack Wheldrake, who had been in charge of the bacon counter for the previous 28 years. "It is a rotten feeling," he said. "I think we must have given good service because customers have been bringing boxes of chocolates for the girls and they would not do that unless they had earned them.

“It is amazing how much talk there has been in the town about the closure.”

Mrs Margaret Young, who had run the bread and cakes department during her 28 years’ service, said she was feeling unhappy about the closure. "I think the whole of Doncaster is sad, customers cannot understand it."

Hodgson and Hepworth’s, a food store for more than 100 years, ceased to be a local family firm in 1948 when a Hull-based firm took it over. A merger in the late 1960s made it part of the national Fine Fare supermarket chain.

Dublin-based textile firm, Primark, which was also part of the Fine Fare chain, subsequently moved into the premises vacated by H and H.