Youngsters are joining the campaign to save a village shop.

Residents in Ickford, near Thame, are trying to raise enough cash to buy the store, on the market for £145,000.

One villager has already offered to donate £5,000, 15 householders have pledged up to £1,000 each, and a committee set up to save Ickford Post Office, in Sheldon Road, believes it can find £35,000.

Residents now hope to win the support of local businesses. Sisters Gill and Anne Quartly are selling the store and flat above it to concentrate on their other business in nearby Worminghall, and plan to leave on January 8.

Residents hope to buy the property and set up a co-operative scheme to continue to run it after the sisters have left.

Without it, they say they will have nowhere to buy groceries and newspapers.

Committee chairman, Martin Armitstead, said there have been shops in the village for four centuries. "No-one wants to lose this shop. It provides an essential service to the whole community," he said. Losing it would be especially hard on the older residents who don't drive.

"If the shop dies, a lot of the heart will go out of the village."

The committee has sent a questionnaire, listing four options, to every home in the village. They are:

*Do nothing and let the shop and Post Office close.

*Find other premises for the Post Office, which Post Office Counters is unlikely to support. *Raise enough money to build new premises.

*Form a co-operative to buy the existing village shop premises and business.

It is estimated that £625 from every household would be enough to save the shop.

Gill Quartly, who has been at the shop for ten years, said: "It will be a sad day when we move on and I hope the villagers succeed in their plans. We have decided to move on because we have two village shops and it is very difficult to run both."

Story date: Saturday 16 October

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.