The last tobacconist: contraband and cost of living close Ipswich institution

Shirley Debenham with a customer buying cigars. Photograph: Si Barber/The Guardian

Pipes, cigars and packets of cigarettes are neatly arrayed on oak shelves lining the walls of MW Ashton in Ipswich, where smokers have gone for 77 years to buy their tobacco.

Now the town’s last tobacconist is preparing to shut its doors for good on Saturday, the latest high street casualty of shifts in shopping habits and the wider economy