A FAMILY clothing business that has been trading in Worcester for more than 200 years has been celebrating a modernisation programme.

Armstrongs, in Sansome Walk, has extended the three-hundred-year-old premises it has occupied for 114 years, to create a new, smart-casual clothing department for men.

It will complement the traditional tailoring, formal hire and men's and women's classic designer-wear departments that the company has become so well known for over the years.

The £40,000 refurbishment and new "lifestyle" department has injected new blood into the business, according to fifth-generation owner Simon Hyslop.

"We have knocked down the side walls and extended into storage space that was the old cutting room," said Mr Hyslop, who runs the company with his sister, Alexandra Stoddard. Their father, Alec Hyslop, is chairman.

Mr Hyslop said any cutting on the premises nowadays was done upstairs in the workroom.

"At one time, the business did not sell off-the-peg clothes, only tailored garments, and the cutting room was a hive of activity," he said.

As a gesture to the past, the new department has been called The Cutting Room.

The business was originally founded by a Scottish draper, in Love's Grove, Worcester, around 1800.

He was succeeded by a clothier named Turner, who later sold out to Andrew Graham, with whom the continuous family line started.

It was Mr Graham who, in 1887, bought Ivy House, the impressive building dating from 1700 which is still home to the business.

Andrew Graham was succeeded by his nephew, John Armstrong who, in 1914, handed the business to his nephew Robert Hyslop, father of Alec.

The new menswear range is a departure from the company's traditional business and has a "modern feel", according to Mr Hyslop.

"It's not old-fashioned," he added.

"We are old-fashioned in the service we give, and I make no apologies for that, but the clothes are modern and stylish."

The company celebrated its expansion with an open evening, which saw businessmen and women from throughout Worcester meet at the premises to toast the new venture.

The department was opened to shoppers last Saturday.