A FIFTH-generation family butchers has opened a third store, their second in North Yorkshire, following a £250,000 investment.

The Kitson family, which already has stores in Hutton Rudby, near Yarm, and Stockton-on-Tees, has opened the shop in Northallerton High Street, creating three new jobs as well as safeguarding a further three which were lost when the previous butchers in the premises ceased trading.

The Kitson family has served the communities of North Yorkshire and Teesside for more than 70 years.

Henry Kitson, born in 1890, opened a butcher’s shop in Birstall, West Yorkshire, around 1910.

His son Frank returned from the Second World War to settle in Hutton Rudby and went into business with his friend Harold “Banty” Grierson, buying the Grierson butcher’s store that had been trading in the village since 1886.

The business was then renamed Kitson’s in the 1960s.

Today Kitson’s has a predicted turnover of £1.5million for the current financial year, with Frank’s grandson, Anthony Kitson, 45, in charge.

It employs 12 staff, many of them family, including Anthony’s mother, Thelma, as well as his two sons, Henry, 20, and Oliver, 19, who both work for Kitson’s in their university holidays Anthony’s sister, Beverly Kitson, 41, left her role as manager at the town’s Marks & Spencer’s store to run the new shop in Northallerton.