A Stamford Bridge butcher will be open for business on Monday after a £20,000 refit insurers said would take three months.

D & Y Taylor, of The Square, Stamford Bridge, spent most of last week under three feet of water which caused extensive damage to its walls, floors and specialist refrigeration equipment.

Owner David Taylor's insurers came in this week with loss adjusters to assess the cost of repairs. But when the landlord's own insurers arrived on Wednesday they said it would take three months for plaster and flooring to be replaced during which time the shop must be closed.

Mr Taylor asked his own insurer, the Balcombe Group Plc, to put pressure on the landlord's insurers to get the work done earlier and he will now pay most of the bill which will be claimed back at a later date.

He said: "We're having a full top to bottom shop refit done at the moment so we will be open as usual on Monday.

"I thought it was going to be closed for three months but if that had happened people would have gone elsewhere and it is very hard to get your custom back after that kind of gap."

A team of more than ten men are now in the shop re-cladding the walls, repairing floors, and replacing refrigeration cabinets.

Mr Taylor said: "They are all working hard to get us open for Monday."

During the floods, Mr Taylor said the refrigeration cabinets were floating like boats around the shop and the old fridge box in the back room, which had been there for more than 20 years, was completely ruined.

He said: "We received a visit from Prince Andrew and he was a smashing man. "He came in with his bodyguard when the cameras were outside and he had a bit of a laugh with me.

"He took one look at the fridge box and said, 'I think the floods have done you a favour,' he was a really down-to-earth chap."

Mr Taylor said that as a special offer to his customers, anyone who spends more than £5 in the shop during the next week will receive a free pound of mince.

Flood villager's anger over superstore 'stunt'

An angry resident in the flood-hit village of Elvington today hit out at Asda, claiming the superstore was cashing in on the village's misfortunes.

Paul Wells said he was furious about the Monks Cross store handing out bags of free food in the village, as reported in Wednesday's Evening Press.

The store said they wanted to help customers through the rough patch after part of the village was marooned during last week's deluge.

But Mr Wells said: "It would have been more to the point if they had come during the floods and come in a boat to help the older people.

"It think it's just unbelievable that they've got the nerve to turn up on the Tuesday when the village has been accessible since Saturday. "They were giving away food right outside the village shop - it's hard enough for village shops to survive. I think it's a blatant PR stunt."

He said friends and colleagues had said they couldn't believe their eyes when Asda staff turned up to give out the bags of "staples" and even enlisted the help of Tom Fitzpatrick, from Elvington Village Store.

Mr Fitzpatrick said Asda had turned up with a 60-foot lorry and because no one had known they were coming, he had suggested ideas for who they could give the bags to.

He said: "Supermarkets are a fact of life now. We get the crumbs off the table and we're happy enough if we get enough of them. But if they had been genuinely interested they should have been here when people couldn't have got into the shop. We went round and delivered to people who couldn't get out."

Wendy Neale, public relations officer at Asda, said: "If it had been a PR stunt, it would have been advertised beforehand that we were going to do it.

"The whole idea was just to help out and at the school the people we gave the bags to were over the moon.

"We're sorry we couldn't get out to everybody but during the floods we wouldn't have been able to get through anyway.

"We can't get a lorry at the click of our fingers so when I found out on Tuesday morning that a lorry was available we only had an hour-and-a-half in the village."

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