Spalding butcher retires after 75 years at the chopping block

• Watch reporter Emma Wilkinson catch up with 85-year-old butcher Brian Burrell. One of Britain's oldest butchers has retired after more than 75 years in the trade.

Brian Burrell, 85, landed his first job as a butcher's Saturday boy in Crowland, near Spalding, in 1948, when he was just ten years-old.

"Rationing was on in the country then, so you couldn't just go into any butcher, you had to be registered with a certain butcher," Brian said.

"My mother said 'I'm going to ask the butcher who came to our house if he needs a Saturday boy to help him out', and that's how it started. And I got ten shillings' wages at the end of the day."

When he was 21, Brian received his National Service papers and was a butcher with the Army Catering Corps, preparing meat for hundreds of troops. 

He went on to work at several independent butcher's shops and meat factories across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire during the course of his long career.

Around ten years ago Brian considered retiring but ended up taking on a part-time role at G Shearer & Son in Holbeach.

He has now decided it is finally time to stop working and dedicate more time to his hobbies, which include making shepherd's crook walking sticks and taxidermy. 

He told ITV News he was proud of his career, saying: "I've enjoyed what I've done. If I could live my life over again, I'd do the same, exactly the same. It's a way of life and it just gets hold of you."

Brian's colleagues said they would be sad to see him retire and will miss hearing his many stories from decades in the industry.

Ben Tindale, manager at G Shearer & Son, is an award-winning butcher but said he is always happy to take advice from Brian.

He said: "It's very much a trade that's passed on through working with someone rather than reading a book. With a butcher of that experience and time in the trade, the stories and the lessons he can teach you are unimaginable."

Alice Taylor, whose grandfather founded the Holbeach-based butcher's, said Brian was helping keep the butchering trade alive by inspiring younger generations to join the industry.

She said: "Butchery is a dying trade at the end of the day so to be a butcher for 75 years is such a great achievement. And it's great that we've got young people starting, we've got a new apprentice and we've got to keep supporting butchery otherwise it will go."

Brian has expressed some scepticism that he will be able to fully step away from work after so long.

He predicted he would be back lending a hand within the month, saying: "I don't live very far from here, you see. So I'll probably be a bit a nuisance! But if they ever need any help, I'll be there."

This isn't Brian's first attempt at retirement. Ten years ago he decided to step away from the shop but after popping into G Shearer & Son in Holbeach he had a change of heart when one of the butchers asked him if he wanted to cut some meat since he had a few free minutes while his wife was having her hair done nearby.

Since then, Brian has been back butchering one day a week. Brian's colleagues have been praising the positive impact of Brian being back at the chopping block. Ben Tindale, shop manager of G Shearer & Son, who started butchering at 17 himself, said: "It's [butchering] very much a trade that's passed on through working with someone rather than reading a book. With a butcher of that experience and time in the trade, the stories and the lessons that he can teach you are unimaginable, like, neverending."

Although Brian says he is finally ending his career in butchery after three quarters of a century, he joked that he may be back yet again.He said: "I bet I'm boning the leg of pork out before the month's out. I shall be a bit of a nuisance probably."

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