Staff and shoppers said a final farewell as two of Shropshire’s branches of Woolworths closed for the last time.

Everything – including fixtures and fittings, fire extinguishers and liquidation posters – was up for sale as the branches in Newport and Whitchurch shut their doors in the first phase of closures after administrators failed to find a buyer for the chain.

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Newport customer George Franks, who used to live in a flat above Newport’s Woolworths in the 1940s, said: “It was the first self-service store in the country. The dearest thing cost sixpence. The first thing I bought at Woolworths was a toy cowboy gun.” 

Shoppers queued from one end of the store to the other, laden with goodies, and an hour before the store was due to close staff handed out carrier bags for customers to fill with anything they wanted for just £3. 

One of the last customers to leave the store was Lorraine Hirst, from Newport. 

She said: “It’s a shame. It’s been here for a very long time. It was a frenzy in there.”

A total of 807 Woolworths shops in the UK are set to cease trading within the coming days, with the loss of hundreds of jobs.

Branches in Oswestry and Market Drayton are set to shut for the final time tomorrow, with those in Shrewsbury, Telford, Wellington and Welshpool closing for good on Friday. The stores in Bridgnorth and Newtown are due to close on January 5.

• Cardboard and rubbish stacked up behind the Newport branch of Woolworths was set alight in an arson attack just hours after it closed. The empty store was left filled with smoke after the fire yesterday, at about 4am. Crews from Newport and Wellington Fire Stations fought to control the fire, which spread to the back of the building, damaging the roof.