The Pilchard Works with its working museum has been salting, pressing and selling the fish to the same Italian family for 100 years. But the death knell sounded for the museum and the traditional side of the business, supplying boxes and casks of salted pilchards, when the Borzone family stopped ordering.

Nick Howell, who bought the business in 1980, said: "It's a sad day but demand has simply declined to such a degree that it's not viable to continue any more. Demand has gone down sharply over the past five years.

"Today people want their fish vacuum-packed or in jars, the British don't like to see their fish ungutted with the heads still on.

"Even in Italy the shops and restaurants don't want the old-fashioned wooden casks any more. The business has changed and so must we. We have to modernise."

Mr Howell plans to turn the building into ten apartments.

The working fish presses were installed in 1927 and the salted fish were until yesterday packed in wooden boxes and casks before being stencilled with their century-old trademarks, using techniques that have been perfected over the years. This year the Newlyn operation has packed 1,200 boxes and just over 100 casks - about 18 tonnes of pilchards - compared with 8,000 boxes and 2,000 casks when Mr Howell opened the museum in 1995.

The museum attracted around 15,000 visitors a year to Newlyn and won two national awards, including the National Heritage Shoestring Award.

Mr Howell will continue producing fresh Cornish sardine fillets and barbecue sardines. He plans to relocate the business elsewhere in Cornwall but is remaining tight-lipped about its location. It has not yet been decided what will happen to the historic working presses, although other items from the museum have been earmarked for new homes.

"It was a real labour of love building up the museum items," Mr Howell said. "We've spent countless hours tramping around skips looking for bits of wood and stone we could use.

"It's sad to see the collection broken up. But we have been discussing some of the items, such as paintings of the pilchard fishermen working, with museums in Cornwall."

Angie Coombs, of Taste of the West, said: "It's almost a sign of the times that to some extent we are only just waking up to this kind of historical food. Had this business been in France or Italy it would not have died - the British are very blase about this type of food."

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