SO near yet so far from the grinding wheels of progress, Cyril Davies was packing away some of his memories last week and shredding the last sheets of paper that recorded the transactions of a once-proud company.

It is one of Newport's lesser metropolitan ironies that work on the Southern Distributor Road, which aims to help regenerate the city, will trample on a few businesses responsible down the years for the region's prosperity.

Mr Davies, managing director of vehicle body repair company Ben Gibbs Industrial Finishes, was clearing up his office in Mill Parade three days after the company ceased trading in advance of the coming of the SDR on the outskirts of Pill.

Despite full compensation to be paid and redundancy settlements for the small group of remaining employees, Mr Davies is not exactly celebrating what he calls the end of an era, in which the company once employed hundreds as a steeplejack, painting and decorating and vehicle repair firm.

"We knew the road was coming so it's not been a surprise," he said. "We've got lots of old pictures here and we were wondering if anyone interested in the history of the place could make use of them."

The photographs, which Mr Davies was packing in a box, show the extensive area occupied by the company before Usk Way was built between it and the river near the Transporter Bridge. Others were taken at a well-attended annual company dinner in 1952. Mr Davies said he had lived with the news of the SDR for four or five years, day and night.

"Of course, we expected it to come one day," he said. "It's progress and there's not a lot you can do. We have to have the road for the regeneration of Newport; it's just that everything seems to have come so quickly."

The end of the business coincides with Mr Davies' retirement - he's 65 - but if the CPO had not been made, he would have sold the company as a going concern or handed it on to his brother, Mervyn.

A semblance of continuity will be maintained when the current employees start up a similar business of their own in another part of town.

Some of them have performed long and sterling service, foreman painter Steve Stone as man and boy, and cleaner Marjorie Welsh for 30 years.

"We used to get youngsters coming in with their cars and they'd tell us that their uncles, grandfathers and fathers worked here," Mr Davies said.

* Pictured: The works beside the River Usk