Mike Harding has retired as Cannington’s postmaster closing the Post Office and ending more than six decades of the family’s connection with the village.

On the final day as he closed the shop for the last time Cllr Ian Dyer, members of the parish council and loyal customers marked the moment with congratulations and thanks.

His mother and father had taken on the Post Office, along with an antique shop next door just after the Second World War, with his father Arthur running the antiques business and Mickey (as his mother Alice called herself) in charge of the post office.

Their two sons Peter and Mike helped out in their holidays including delivering the post by bike but it was Mike who decided to take on the post office as a career after his father died in 1962.

The post office has now moved to the revamped Spar store in the village.