THE last branch of a North-East family business that has roots going back to the 1800s is to close tomorrow.

Blacks Health Food Centre, in Fore Bondgate, Bishop Auckland, was once one of four Blacks stores trading in the region.

The family name also adorned stores in Stockton, Middlesbrough and Durham which thrived in the Sixties and Seventies, counting athletes, sportsmen and celebrities among the customers.

But the foundations of the family-run business go back further still when John Birch, a former Lancashire coal miner, moved to the region.

Mr Birch registered with the National Institute of Medical Herbalists and documents show he was practising as early as 1884.

Rebecca Birch, followed in her father’s foot steps and is thought to have practised from her home in Ferryhill, County Durham, in the early 1900s.

In 1935, she opened Birch’s, in Market Place, Durham, which later became Blacks after she married George Black.

The couple had a son, also George, before Mrs Black died, carrying their second child. However, in her relatively short life she became a renowned herbalist mixing remedies out the back and keeping meticulous records.

The couple’s son, now 73, joined the business 50 years ago, studying as a medical herbalist after serving in the RAF.

The Durham store moved to Claypath and stores followed in Bishop Auckland, in 1964, in Middlesbrough’s Linthorpe Road, in 1965, and in Stockton’s Bishopton Lane, in 1966.

At one point George Black’s Porsche could be found parked by Dave Clark’s Rolls Royce outside one of the successful health centres.

As well as the Dave Clark Five drummer, celebrities including Lulu and Honor Blackman were patrons, as was Lord Londonderry who once owned Wynyard Hall.

Customers were seen as patients and many would turn to Blacks for help to relieve conditions and ailments after conventional medicine failed.

But as cheaper imported health supplements became available in supermarkets, and eventually on the internet, Blacks found it increasingly hard to compete.

First to go was the Middlebrough branch, in the early Nineties, when George Black senior died, and then Durham, in 2002.

About two years ago the Stockton branch closed and at the same time Mr Black sold the Bishop Auckland branch to his son Alastair’s father-inlaw, Dave Hastings, who had been working at the store for the previous four years.

Mr Hastings, who jointly owns the store with his son-inlaw, said he could not compete, on a commercial level, adding: “We are all very sad to see the shop closing, especially since the business has been in the family for 75 years, and the store has been in Bishop Auckland for 46 years. I have always enjoyed working here, it has been interesting meeting so many different people.”

Writing in defence of her trade, in 1936, in a Sunday newspaper Rebecca Birch explained the underlying ethos of herbalism which Mr Hastings fears will now be lost.

She wrote: “I am sure herbalists will bear me out in this – we never get a ‘clean’ case. All our patients are off the scrap heap. They come to us when all hope is gone. If our treatment restores them to health they pass the good news on. There are thousands today who thank herbal treatment for their restoration to health.”