A blind repairman who identifies vacuum cleaners by touch and sound retires today. Mark Tallentire visits Wilf Scully.

TO step inside Wilf Scully Domestic Appliances is to enter an Aladdin’s Cave of electricals.

Mr Scully sits in a faded brown armchair, behind an ancient wood desk.

On top, a white, large button telephone intermittently rings into action, with another customer seeking the benefit of his encyclopaedic knowledge.

At the shop counter, Keith Fenwick, who has bought the business, brings to him a dusty vacuum cleaner which would not look out of place in a museum.

He runs a hand along the domed top.

“That’s a Hoover 262. First sold in 1938 and stayed on the market until 1956,” is the effortless response.

Later, a middle-aged woman arrives in the store with a thin, circular pipe, to be told what washing machine it belongs to, when the model was manufactured and that replacements can no longer be obtained.

Mr Scully was registered blind in 1983. But he refused to let the disability stop him doing the job he loved, learning to find his way around the machines without his eyes.

Now 91, Mr Scully is retiring after more than 70 years in the trade.

Reflecting on his career, he says: “I’d like to thank all the customers that I’ve dealt with. I’ve had a wonderful life.”

Born in Ferryhill, County Durham, before the end of the First World War, Mr Scully joined vacuum cleaner maker Hoover in 1937.

Wilf Scully Domestic Appliances has been a fixture of High Street North, in Langley Moor, near Durham City, since 1966.

Mr Scully’s brother, George, also worked in the shop for many years.

A widower for 16 years, Mr Scully, who now lives in Spennymoor, has decided to retire due to failing mobility.

In his 40 years in Langley Moor, he has pulled from blocked pipes everything from condoms to candles.

Also a capable repairman of cookers, fridges and freezers, he still has the name and address of every customer to buy a vacuum cleaner from him.

His favourite model?

“The Hoover model 612,”

he says, without hesitation.

“They used the motors from that until three or four years ago.”

Mr Fenwick will rename the store Keith Fenwick Electricals and is planning some internal refurbishment.

But, he admits, he cannot bring himself to drop Mr Scully’s name entirely.

“It will still be there on the sign,” he said.

“The Scully business is so well-known. I want to keep that reputation going.”