One town’s long wait for fish and chips is set to end tomorrow.

Eastern Daily Press: The Three Cottages fish and chip shop in North Walsham. Picture: David AudleyThe Three Cottages fish and chip shop in North Walsham. Picture: David Audley (Image: David Audley)

The Three Cottages in North Walsham will become the first fish and chip shop to reopen in the town after lockdown saw all three close on March 23, despite the fact takeaways were still legally allowed to open.

From tomorrow, the restaurant will be offering an online takeaway service where three customers at a time can book a slot to collect their fish and chips, with plans to introduce a similar telephone service in the near future, however no orders will be taken at the shop.

The restaurant began taking orders for Tuesday on Saturday, with staff overwhelmed by the response.

Owner David Audley, 73, said it had taken a while to get the takeaway service up and running and added that the delay in reopening was down to the fact queues of up to 30 people could gather in the restaurant during peak times.

Eastern Daily Press: The Three Cottages fish and chip shop in North Walsham. Picture: David AudleyThe Three Cottages fish and chip shop in North Walsham. Picture: David Audley (Image: David Audley)

Mr Audley said the shop had dealt with lockdown closure well, however he said that reopening would be a more difficult process.

He said: “It has been a difficult period, but no worse than anyone else, staff have been furloughed, the bills haven’t been too drastic.

“The hard bit is going to be the next three months because we’re reopening which means that we’re going to have staff coming back plus we will have more bills to pay, and it looks like we may only do about 25pc of the trade we have done in the past because we will have to restrict it so much - this is the difficult period.

“I’ve been in the business now for 40 years and we’ve had all sorts of problems before, none quite like this one but we’ve had lots of others and we’ve got through them all.”

Eastern Daily Press: The Three Cottages fish and chip shop in North Walsham. Picture: David AudleyThe Three Cottages fish and chip shop in North Walsham. Picture: David Audley (Image: David Audley)

He added: “Fish and chips always comes back, it was the one thing that kept going throughout the second world war, so if that didn’t finish us Coronavirus certainly isn’t going to.”

Those looking to place an order can do so here.