GOLDEN wedding anniversary celebrations were put on hold by a shop-keeping couple who continued serving with a smile on their big day.

Eva and Billy Bayles are familiar faces to villagers in Esh Winning, working between them 14-and-a-half hours a day, seven-days a week, at the family general dealers' premises, in Western Avenue.

Helped by daughter-in-law Shirley, they only usually close on Christmas Day, while they also run the next door fish and chip shop several days a week.

Such is their dedication to duty, and their customers, that they opened as normal on their 50th wedding anniversary last Friday.

But with a family celebration planned for this Saturday, they are planning a small concession to themselves, by closing early for once.

Mrs Bayles said: "It's usually a busy day on a Friday, and my son Barrie was going away over last weekend, so we decided to put off our party until this weekend.

"We are going to close a bit earlier, at 5.30pm, but we have put a notice up so people are not taken by surprise.

"Billy normally opens up for 6am and we do not close until 8.30pm."

The couple are often affectionately known among locals as the "Arkwrights", after Ronnie Barker's corner shop-owning character from the 1970s television sit-com Open All Hours.

Mrs Bayles, a former factory worker in Lanchester, began working at the fish and chip shop 20 years ago and came home from holiday three years later to find son Barrie had bought the premises.

They acquired the next door general dealers' shop 12 years ago, when Mr Bayles took early retirement from the former Mattinson's meat factory, in Durham.

The couple, who met at a wedding reception in Mr Bayles' home village of Leadgate, near Consett, will mark their anniversary at Newhouse Catholic Hall, Esh Winning