One of Canterbury’s oldest shops will officially shut this weekend after 55 years in the city.

Quirky antiques store Saracens Lantern opened in Borough in 1970, and has become an icon of the city among tourists and residents alike thanks to its green old-timey signage.

Since 2000, the shop has also become famed for its unusual habit of only opening on Saturday, with this weekend (June 21) being the final hurrah for owner Bill Christophers.

Mr Christophers, who paid £2,900 for the shop after saving up cash working at the Kingsman’s bakery in Sturry, previously told KentOnline he had decided to bring the shutters down as the business had taken its toll on his health.

The 79-year-old sold the freehold for the shop in 2004, with the upstairs being converted into a duplex. In exchange, he secured a 999-year lease with a peppercorn rent.

This was four years after he had decided to only open the store on Saturdays in 2000.

“When I first started, I opened six and sometimes seven days a week. I never had a holiday for the first five years that I had the shop,” he explained.

“I found that you get a lot of people coming in during the course of the week, they just sort of look round and say ‘Oh, lovely stock, lovely stock, who does the dusting?’ And I got thoroughly fed up.

“I thought: ‘People go to antiques fairs and they're only on one day, sometimes two days a week, and they're at the weekend, so why shouldn't I benefit by just being open on a Saturday?’

“I found that over the first six months that I did Saturdays only, my takings had only gone down by about 20%.”

News of the closure has been greeted with sadness as many reflect on having grown up with Saracens Lantern, which got its name from an iron lamp bracket Bill bought from The Saracen’s Head pub when it was demolished in 1969, in the background.

One dubbed it “an Aladdin’s cave”, with another describing it as “a part of the furniture”.