A long-established Lincolnshire hardware shop adopted a new name this month after its owner decided it was time to retire and sell the business on.
Hawkins Home Hardware was set up in Holbeach over 60 years ago by Len Hawkins, who handed it on to his son Andrew. Now, after 45 years at the helm, Andrew himself is retiring and the shop has been taken on by father-and-son team Steve and Matt Tonks.

The shop has been renamed Tonwood Home Hardware, combining part of the Tonks name with Wood, the maiden name of Steve's wife Liz, who is also joining the business.

Andrew Hawkins told diyweek.net that his father, who had trained as an ironmonger in Stamford, started the shop after returning from the war. "He accrued enough capital to acquire a bakehouse and he gradually put together a shop," he said. "We opened up in 1953 and we managed to beg, borrow and steal from various sources and we borrowed things from people in the trade."

Sheffield was still an important source of metal products for the shop, and it benefited from a local need to make major home improvements.

"There were grants for putting a bathroom and kitchen in because this area was very rural," explained Mr Hawkins - who was five when the shop opened and who liked to help out in the shop even when very young.

"I'm over the moon that I've found a nice family to take it over - delighted," he went on. "Matthew has been working for Homebase for nine years and done a degree in computer studies, and his dad's been working for a DIY chain in Weston-super-Mare for the last three years, and they wanted to get cracking on their own.

"They'll be taking the business forward into the 21st century, and they'll want to do more online trading. I handed the business over on May 6 and I'm just here to show them the ropes. If they need me I'm here to assist them in developing the business."

Hawkins Home Hardware employed nine full- and part-time staff, and all but one, who wanted to retire, will remain with Tonwood.

"It was part of my requirement that they would be taken on," Mr Hawkins said.

He added: "I've been here 45 years and we've moved and changed with the times, and this is just the next change." He said he was "absolutely" sad to be leaving. "But at 66 I've got to start to think about other things in life than coming to Holbeach and opening up in the morning and closing in the evening."