Roger Jacob has reached the impressive 40 years' milestone as Postmaster for Hinton Charterhouse.

The 59-year-old became one of the UK's youngest Postmasters in November 1983 at the age of 18.

He was the third generation of Postmasters in his family, following in the footsteps of his grandfather Clarence and Dad, Tony, in more ways than one. They had all combined the role of Postmaster with being the village postman.

Roger and Tony also both saved the lives of people in the village. Roger spotted that an elderly woman, who he kept an eye out for, was not at her front window as usual. He was concerned and he discovered that she had had a nasty fall and got her rushed to hospital. His father also heroically rescued someone from their burning house.

Clarence became Postmaster for Hinton Charterhouse after World War II, and when he passed away in 1974, Tony took up the helm.

Tony then took on Wellow Post Office. This was one of the first outreach Post Offices in the UK, whereby a Postmaster would visit a nearby Post Office on a part-time basis at set times each week to maintain service to a community.

Roger had planned to join the navy. He had passed all the stages to do so and his goal was to fly helicopters with the Fleet Air Arm. Then his father died suddenly. Roger took over the running of the business. He expanded the retail side of the business and added another outreach Post Office at nearby Freshford community shop two mornings a week.

In the time that the Jacob family have run Hinton Charterhouse Post Office it has relocated four times to meet the changing needs of the village. It used to be a standalone Post Office and someone else ran a village shop elsewhere, then that shop closed. Larger premises were needed for a combined Post Office and village shop, including a newsagents.

At one point Roger would sort the mail when it arrived at 5.15am, then deliver it at the same time as popping newspapers through letter boxes and leaving egg deliveries on doorsteps all before starting a full days' work as a Postmaster. Later he became the collections postman for Hinton Charterhouse, instead of deliveries and continued to work for Royal Mail on a part-time basis until last month.

Roger, the father of four boys, also found time to be a rugby and cricket coach. His Dad, Tony, used to be a talented rugby player for Bath RFC.

Postmaster, Roger Jacob, said: "The thing that I have enjoyed most about my job is that no two days are the same. They are varied, so no chance to get bored. I'm serving customers and in between sorting out orders for the retail side of the business. When I started with Post Office you used to have to be able to do book-keeping and to enter lots of things into ledgers, but that all changed with computers, making life much easier.

"Having lived here all my life, my roles as a Postmaster and as Postman and raising four children, I know everyone in the village and I enjoy chatting to people.

"Times have changed, we used to provide more Government services, savings and premium bonds, but the business has evolved. We've picked up lots of banking customers due to many bank branch closures and a lot of people now do home shopping, so many parcels are collected or returned from here."

For a while Royal Mail had a sorting office alongside Hinton Charterhouse, but this was later moved to Bath. He now uses this space for the changing needs of his business including for storage of parcels for collections, home shopping returns and to store stock for his retail business and for his work office.

The shop that he started sells daily essentials including milk, eggs, bread, fruit and vegetables plus he takes orders for meat and other groceries.

The Post Office and shop managed to stay open during the pandemic and the community was delighted that they did not need to travel elsewhere. The shop also made deliveries to those in the community who were shielding or had Covid.

Roger Jacob was presented with his Post Office 40 Years' Long Service Award at the national Post Office Postmasters conference held in Bristol ( November 21).

Post Office Area Manager, Jason Lawrence, said: "Roger, his father and grandfather have really been at the heart of their Somerset village for three generations as Postmasters and as postmen. I really want to thank Roger for this committed service for four decades to the people of Hinton Charterhouse and for providing outreach Post Office services to the people of Wellow and Freshford for many years. Roger is very hard-working and really cares for the communities that he serves."