Britain’s oldest butcher at age 88
looking at it, her favourite being a nice piece of fried corner rump.
Since she fell and broke her arm last year, and still came in the next day, it’s harder to wield the saws, cleavers and knives hanging in the shop but bacon is sliced by hand rather than machine and she still sharpens the knife the old-fashioned way with every use.
Christmas orders come through on the old-fashioned landline but Marian has a smartphone.
But the number of people still prepared to wait for a steak to be hand cut to size is dwindling and younger generations struggle to name the different cuts of meat that roll off Marian’s tongue as easily as a modern child could reel off a McDonald’s children’s menu.
Many of her older customers have passed away and a few months ago a new Lidl supermarket opened at the other side of the town centre to Marian’s shop on Newland Street.
“It is quiet but I don’t know if that’s it,” she said.
“A lot of my customers wouldn’t buy cheap meat in a supermarket. They want to know where it’s from and like to see me cut it up in front of them so they can get it exactly how they want it.
“Town is empty but I think it’s because of the virus. A lot of older people have stopped coming in and some people don’t have as much money so they aren’t eating as much meat.”
I ask if she think’s it’s because she only takes cash and not cards but she just shakes her head.
Son Paul hasn’t followed his parents into the family business so the Voyces will not be able to compete with the Balson’s of Bridport in Dorset who have been in the trade for more than 500 years and are now on generation number 26.
“He’s a librarian,” says Marian. “Lionel used to tell him to get a job with holidays and benefits because we never had any of that.
“We had a weekend away in Weston for our honeymoon and sometimes we would finish early at four o’clock on a Saturday and drive down to Bournemouth to see my friend. We would drive back Sunday so we could be in work on Monday, that’s all we ever had.”
A few years after her husband died she was persuaded by three other widows in the town to find holiday cover and visited Tenerife, Malaysia, New York and Cuba.
Although she enjoyed it, she’s done enough travelling and prefers to view the world through the window of her shop which looks out onto the town centre where she has spent her days for over 50 years.
“My friends do keep on about it,” she says when asked if she has any plans to retire.
“But I like coming in here, giving my customers a good product and having a chat at the same time.
“Anyway, I don’t think I could sell it as a butcher’s shop because there isn’t any future in it. I’d just have to sell it as another empty property.”
Frank Fisher was thought to be the oldest working butcher in Britain until he was forced to give up Fisher & Sons butchers in Dronfield, Derbyshire, after a fall in 2018 when he was 88. Now it seems the title has gone to Marian. She’s a lady of few words but you get the feeling she would feel as if she was letting down Frederick and Lionel Voyce if she hung up her apron now.
Their names are on the original sign hanging above the large fridges in the old-fashioned shop.
Customer Susan Lewis is one of the customers who sits down on the chairs while Marian cuts her pork chops to order.
“She’s been here forever,” she says. “She’s a bit of an icon and everybody knows her. Every year she says ‘I won’t be here by Christmas’, but every Christmas she’s still here doing the orders.
“I think she should retire and have a bit of Marian time but I don’t think that’s going to happen. She’ll probably be here for years yet.”
The year Marian and Lionel opened their shop, McDonald’s launched the first Big Mac in America, but Marian’s never been one for fast food.
“I never eat beef out, you don’t know where it’s come from,” she said.
“You don’t know what you are getting.”
And as for veganism and vegetarian she says: “I don’t have patience with all of that.
“We used to have a doctor come in here and he would say to me ‘you need a certain amount of everything’. If you mix it up you get all the things you need. I eat what I want.”
With that she returns to her lunch of crisps, apple and ham.
And to be fair, a diet of hard work and eating what she wants seems to suit her. After all there can’t be many 88-year-olds who pull on a pair of skinny jeans to go to work six days a week.
It’s no good sitting at home worrying about
it. I’d rather be here. I think we’ve been lucky in the Forest because it’s not been that bad
here MARIAN VOYCE