Phil's Sausages in Lee-on-the-Solent to close this April as owner Phil Groth retires after 58 years as a butcher

Phil Groth has run Phil’s Sausages on High Street, Lee-on-the-Solent, for the past 21 years but has decided to close the shop – which has been in his family since 1963, formerly under the name Evison’s Butchers – this April as he plans to retire aged 73.

During his career in butchery, Phil has been recognised with several prestigious awards including best national speciality sausage in 1984 and he shook hands with former England football captain Emlyn Hughes after coming second at a competition held in Birmingham. He has become a well-known figure in Lee-on-the-Solent and is affectionately called ‘Captain Sausage’ or ‘Mr Sausage’ by some.

Phil said: ‘I’ll miss the customers mainly - meeting all of those different people and chatting to them all day. My knees are aching somewhat so I find it more and more difficult to stand up for eight hours in a row.

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‘I know quite a lot of them by name and most are very sad. It’s the end of an era because I’m a very old-fashioned shop having kept it almost the same for 50 years.

‘The idea of going and speaking to somebody who knows exactly what he’s selling and who has made it is getting rarer and rarer these days.

Phil first became interested in the meat trade while working at his father’s butchers shop in 1965 after leaving school. He found a passion for sausage-making in 1967 while travelling in Germany and learnt how to make bratwurst.

Phil has taken time away to pursue other interests but always returned to butchery. He took a coach from London to India in 1973 during his ‘hippy days’, stopping in Iran, Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan. He also worked as a science technician at Fareham College before starting his own business.

In 2002, Phil bought Evison’s Butchers - which had been running since 1963 - from his brother and renamed it ‘Phil’s Sausages.’ His father had a catering business called Direct Game Supplies He said his shop has remained as popular as ever throughout his career and that people still queue every weekend to buy his sausages.

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According to Phil, the use of fresh ingredients been the secret to his success. The shop specialises in traditional English sausages in a variety of flavours using pork, beef, lamb and venison. He added: ‘The idea is to not put too much fat but put fresh meat in. The meat that you’re putting in, if you wouldn’t mind eating it as it is, your sausage will be okay. It used to be the way that the stuff you couldn’t sell you’d put into sausages to get rid of it.’

Phil’s Sausages will close its doors for the last time on Saturday, April 1.

According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of stores that specialise in the sale of meat in the UK fell by 1,186 between 2008 and 2020.