A former city shoe shop that was once boarded up and derelict is being restored and should reopen next month as an exhibition gallery.

R Yallop's family footwear in St Augustine's Street, between Bari's hairdresser and the Catherine Wheel pub, closed several years ago and was left to deteriorate, before it was sold for �48,000 by Auction House earlier in the year.

Owner Tony George has spent about four months restoring it and he plans to call the new shop, which will be used as a community gallery space for hire, Yallop's gallery in memory of the former shoe shop.

Mr George, who also runs the Nunn's Yard exhibition gallery in the street, said: 'When I first came to view the building none of the windows were open and it was completely black.

'Even though it had been closed for many years, it looked as if the last person who ran it had just got out of bed, gone for a pint of milk, and never came back. It was full of shoe boxes, price tickets and letters.

'And when I came to restore it, the whole frontage was rotten, but we have used some of the original timber on the front and will reinstate the roller blinds. We are already getting a lot of interest from passers-by.'

It's not the first time Mr George, who is a student at the Norwich University College of the Arts, has restored a property in St Augustine's Street. He transformed a former convenience store into Nunn's Yard, and also plans to restore another property in the street, 13a, which is next to Norwich Screen Art.

Do you have memories of Yallop shoe shop and its last proprietor Joan Burton? Email reporter David Bale at david.bale2@archant.co.uk