IT was a case of being at home on the range for fish and chip shop brothers Brian and Ramsay Davy.

The duo were guests of honour as ‘Davy’s Fried Fish Shop’ opened its doors for the first time in the pit village at Beamish Museum, County Durham.

At the preview event, the first battered cod and chips went to museum director Richard Evans, fresh from the coal-fired range used by the brothers’ family business in the village of Winlaton Mill in Gateshead.

It was the last working coal-fired range on Tyneside when the Winlaton Mill shop closed in 2007 after the death of the brothers’ mother Isabella.

She had run the chip shop with her husband Robert since the 1950s.

Robert would make trips to North Shields’ quay to buy fresh fish and also ran a wet fish van round. Brian and Ramsay, their sister Isabella and family friend Alice Alderdice all helped out with the business.

The premises had been purpose-built as a fish and chip shop by the brothers’ grandfather John in 1937.

The coal-fired range was made in 1934 and had been used in a chip shop in nearby High Spen.

When that closed in 1961 the three-pan range was switched to Winlaton Mill, where beef dripping was always used for frying.

That process will continue when the Beamish shop opens today for seven days a week to feed the 420,000 visitors who flock to the museum each year.