A RETAILER is celebrating thirty years in Ledbury with a fund-raising drive for a local hospice.

Sue Edwards of The Kitchen Cupboard in the High Street has launched a famous faces competition, in which customers have to put names to faces on a printed sheet, following a £1 donation for St Michael's Hospice.

Thirty kitchen-related prizes are up for grabs, one prize for every year Miss Edwards has traded in town.

She said: "Thirty years as a retailer in Ledbury is a long time for any one generation, for an independent shop. Ledbury has been good to me, and I'm still here. Thirty years is a milestone; I'm not retiring, just marking the event."

Miss Edwards picked St Michael's Hospice because its a charity that "a lot of local people can relate to; everyone knows someone who has been there."

The competition will come to a close at the end of October, by which time Miss Edwards hopes to have raised a sum "into three figures".

Miss Edwards attributes her long-lasting success to Ledbury's special qualities as a retail town.

She said: "Ledbury is lovely, because it's mainly independent shops, and that's the big attraction with our town centre. That's what people like, and in independent shops you often have a wider choice.

"There have been varying times in those 30 years, but I think that small shops can weather things better than larger shops, which have far larger overheads."

Miss Edwards moved to her present location, near Top Cross, some twenty years ago.

Her original shop was based in The Homend Mews and first opened in the autumn of 1986.