A VISIONARY retailer who set up a popular North Yorkshire shoe shop and went on to establish an international chain has died aged 88.

Catherine Kinloch Paver started Pavers in 1971 with a £200 loan, but leaves behind an organisation with 160 shops across three continents.

Born in May 1928, Mrs Paver was one of five children brought up in a working class area of Kirkcaldy, in Fife, Scotland.

She moved to York in 1943 to find work when her parents could no longer afford for her to continue in senior school and her first job was helping wounded soldiers in the city’s military hospital.

Her first retail job was at Boots, and it was around this time she met and married her husband of 51 years, Michael Paver.

After a period selling from people’s living rooms and pioneering out of town retailing, the company opened its first high street shop in Scarborough in 1982.

Others in York, Hull and Newcastle quickly followed.

A few years later, spotting a trend early in its development, Pavers opened its first outlet store in North Shields offering footwear at 30 per cent less than normal retail prices.

Many shops have opened since, as did an overseas venture, Pavers England, which is based in Dubai.

It operates throughout the Middle East, India, and Sri Lanka, but its headquarters remain at Monks Cross, in York.

The mother-of-three has been described as an outstanding woman of substance.

A tribute from the Paver family read: “We will sorely miss Cathy’s wisdom, guile, and ferocious intelligence.

“However, despite footwear being in her DNA, her first love, and the one she treasured above all other, was for her family.

“A devoted mother to her three sons, all of whom later joined her in the business, and as a grandmother, and great-grandmother, she considered this element of her life probably her finest work, and in which her spirit will undoubtedly live on.

“Illness and pain never diminished her love for shoes and she was brightest in her last few days when discussing buys for Autumn and Winter 2017.”

She had spent her final two weeks with loved ones.