WORK is underway to transform a landmark York city centre shop.

The former Burgins Perfumery at 2 Coney Street has been sitting empty for some time, but amid the lockdown, work is currently going on inside to turn it in to a cafe.

Burgins had been trading for 137 years before it went out of business in July 2017, but plans were submitted by the Feoffees of St Martin le Grand Church in Coney Street to run the place as a cafe.

Last year a planning application was submitted to City of York Council to turn the store in to cafe and, as we reported at the time, it said: “Coney Street is generally considered to be York’s premier shopping street, yet retailers, especially in the fashion sector, have been closing shops.

“[St Helen’s Square] has become a focus for restaurants, mostly with outside seating areas, which adds to the cosmopolitan character of the location.”

It added that the shop would suit becoming a cafe rather than a restaurant because there is no courtyard into which it could run an air duct from a kitchen.

It said that the proposed opening hours would be from 8am to 11pm seven days a week.

Previous plans to open a new branch of Lucky Days cafe in the empty shop were abandoned - with the owner of the chain Chris Holder saying he encountered numerous bureaucratic difficulties in making changes to the Grade II listed building.

Mr Holder, who already has three Lucky Days branches elsewhere in the city centre - in Parliament Street, Church Street and Low Petergate - said he faced a series of requirements in relation to interior alterations and was told he could only have two tables, each with two chairs, outside the site, when he had wanted four tables, each with four chairs.

The Burgins shop first opened as Mark F Burgin’s pharmacy in 1880.

It was subsequently taken over by the Wright family in 1934 and changed into a perfumery in 1972.