Shutters come down on Laura Ashley... the faded flower of high street

sad for Laura that it has come to this. I think she would be mortified that it is disappearing from the high street.”

Despite her impending redundancy, Liz only has pride in the company she has devoted her working life to. “People think shop staff just stand around and tidy up, but the job has always been busy and varied,” she says. “Before health and safety rules changed everything, deliveries would turn up midmorning and we would carry everything through the shop, dodging the customers.

“We had one regular who used to come in to browse with her pet chicken in a basket and there were these floral dungarees which would sell out the moment they landed on the rail.

“We wallpapered the interiors and displays ourselves and designed all the windows. I learned to understand feet and inches thanks to doing the made-to-measure curtain orders. I remember the names of the different prints and if I ever get dementia, I think I still will.”

For former head office employee Lin Evans, both her family and working lives have been closely intertwined with those of the Ashleys. Lin was at school with Laura’s daughter Jane and joined the firm as a sewing machinist doing piecework in 1973.

“I was too fussy for my own good and struggled to make my money, but it led to me becoming the only sample machinist in Carno,” says the 66-year-old. “I would put the garments together using new patterns to determine whether they fit together correctly.

‘Then I moved on to lay planning, which was the method to determine how much fabric was required to make a garment and ensure cutters wasted as little as possible.” Lin rose through the ranks and was involved in the transition to new technologies. She frequently attended events with the Ashleys, even flying on the company private plane for a factory visit.

She went to both of their funerals (Bernard died in February 2009) and was invited to a reception at the Ashley family home in Rhydoldog in 2010 before the family-run business was sold.

At one point, Lin’s mother worked in the canteen, her father in the wallpaper department, and she met her husband Robert in the Carno factory when he was working as a cutter. “It wasn’t unusual to have whole families