Former Whitby butcher retires after 75-year career

Brian Burrell was just 10 when he landed his first job as a butcher’s Saturday boy in 1948 – back when George VI was King and the NHS had just launched.

During his long career the great-grandfather has worked at several independent butcher’s shops and meat factories around Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

For the past 10 years he has worked two days a week at G Shearer & Son, in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, but has finally decided to call it a day after more than seven decades.

Mr Burrell, who lives near Spalding, Lincolnshire, said: "I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my career. I never wanted to do anything else.

"I didn't think I would still be working at 85. It just happened and then became a regular thing.

"My work became a way of life, but now I’ve noticed I’m getting slower, and I’ve got other things I want to focus on.

"But I’ve still got my knives, so if I was asked to come out of retirement and help out, I probably would."

He was born in Spalding in 1938, the oldest of three children.

His father worked on the land and due to this the family ended up moving house every couple of years.

He was 10-years-old when he got his first job as a Saturday boy at Parkinson’s Butchers, in Crowland, Lincolnshire.

He added: "Butchers did van rounds back then, serving from the back of the vehicle. It was the Saturday boy’s job to run around to the back door of the houses, shouting ‘butcher’s here’ and then everyone would come out with their meat dishes.

"Rationing was still going on at the time.

"Everyone was allowed ten pence of meat, per person, per week – that was in old money and less than a shilling back then - but you could get a pork pie, haslet and sausages.

"I wasn’t there too long before my parents moved and took over The Dun Cow, in Cowbit, so I joined George Adams, in Spalding. I started as a Saturday boy and moved up to errand boy.”

Mr Burrell moved to Yorkshire for a time, working in a meat factory outside Whitby and then returned to Lincolnshire to be close to family.