A leading outdoor clothing and equipment chain has shut its only Kent store after more than 20 years.

Blacks Outdoors in Burgate, Canterbury is being cleared out of its stock and fittings, with closing down signs in the windows.

The retailer has had a turbulent time in recent years, having gone into administration in 2012, only to be rescued by JD Sports in a £20 million deal.

Blacks has 36 branches nationwide but the Canterbury store was the only one in Kent.

Recently closures have also been announced in Bury St Edmund’s and Sheffield, although both sites are set to become branches of Go Outdoors, also owned by JD Sports.

That is not expected to happen in Canterbury where there is already a large outlet of the chain in Wincheap.

Blacks has been asked for a comment.

The closure leaves three other specialist outdoor clothing shops in the city centre - Mountain Warehouse in the High Street and Trespass in St Peter’s Street and Rohan, in Palace Street.

But the loss of Blacks in Burgate, which was previously a branch of Liberty and the Burgate tea shop, will be a blow to the historic street scene.

City conservation architect Clive Bowley says it is a landmark 15th-century listed building so cannot undergo any material alteration.

Particularly striking is its massive oak ground floor framing which was removed in the 19th century but replaced with slender steel poles which were later found to be unstable.

Following a survey by Canterbury Archaeological Society, the oak frame was skillfully and sympathetically reconstructed and installed in a complex heritage project in the 1980s , with input from Mr Bowley.