SINCE Jon Maguire took over the fish and chip shop under the clock tower in Kingswood's Regent Street, he has had his ear bent by customers and staff telling him about their memories of the shop "back in the day".

"I get customers coming in who are in their 80s, telling me they have been coming here for their fish and chips all their lives," says the 50-year-old.

Jon has owned the shop – now known as Maguire's at the Clock Tower – since May last year.

With people telling him that the shop has served fish and chips for as long as they can remember, Jon thought the history of his chippy was worth investigating a bit further.

He enlisted the help of local historian John Oldham, who discovered that a "fried fish dealer" was operating out of the address as far back as 1902.

John did a study of Regent Street, looking at the Kelly's Directories of the area – a Victorian version of the Yellow Pages.

In 1914, he found that the address was listed as a "continuing fried fish premises" – owned by a Mr Sidney Fry.

When John researched even further back, the 1902 Kelly's Directory showed that Sidney Fry was listed as a fried fish dealer at the address at the turn of the century.

The 1911 census also shows that Sidney Fry was listed as a "fish merchant" at 84 Regent Street.

And owner Jon has a feeling that the shop might be even older.

"A fish and chip shop may have been trading here before 1902," he said. "The rank of shops we are in pre-dates the Clock Tower which was built to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897."

He plans to keep investigating in an effort to try and uncover when exactly the premises first operated as a chippy.

But even without this information, he believes the shop might be the oldest surviving fish and chip shop in the country.

"There were shops that first opened before this time, but have since closed," he said. "The oldest chippy was probably run out of a terraced house in Grimsby somewhere, but all those very early ones have gone now. We think we might be the oldest one to still be running out of the same building."

As he cuts fresh cod into portions for the day's lunch trade, and other staff chip potatoes, Jon describes what he imagines the shop would have been like at the end of the 19th century.

"The customers would probably have been Kingswood miners," he said. "And back then it was called the Clocktower Fish Saloon – a very grand name.

"For years and years there would have been 'wet fish' – people would have chosen a piece of fish from the counter and had it fried in front of them.

"The fish would have been cod and it would have been delivered from Bristol market. The fish and chips would have been served in newspaper – it was all right to do that in the old days, until they started modernising print and they got all sorts of chemicals bleeding into the batter from the colour photographs."

One of his members of staff, Ann Parker, has been working at the shop for 29 years and has worked for three different owners.

Ann, 72, says that for as long as she could remember there had always been a fish and chip shop on the spot.

Jon is proud that the shop still uses traditional techniques – a large metal barrel-shaped rumbler is used to scrub the skins from the potatoes, and then they are put through a chipping machine and rinsed. He says that many shops now use frozen, pre-cut chips.

Staff at Maguire's also cut their own fish portions from the frozen fish which is delivered, and batter it just before it is dropped in the fryer.

Jane Coppard, who has worked at the shop for ten years, is Kingswood born and bred.

"When I was little there was also a chippy across the road, and this one was known as the 'posh chip shop'," she said. "It's funny sometimes to think that I now work here."

In a nod to its history, Jon has already put up old photos in the shop, and he jokes to his staff that he'll soon have them dressed in Edwardian fancy dress.

"I think it is really good for Kingswood to have such a piece of history on their doorstep," he says.