Spiders Costume and Party Shop will close the doors on its Olive Street premises at the end of October.

Owner of the business for the past 33 years, Glenys Gibbon​ said the last day of operation would be October 31.

“Our last day of trade will be Halloween and it will be one hell of a shindig!” Mrs Gibbon said on Wednesday.

Together with her late husband Peter, Mrs Gibbon took over the business then known as Spiders Discount Warehouse in 1983 from Ken and Edith Webb.

The Webbs had opened the business in Smollett Street in 1972.

“Spiders was named after the original owners whose surname was Webb,” she said.

“Ken was a barber and he loved a party; the shop had bulk balloons and novelty items.”

Mr and Mrs Gibbon – who affectionately became known as Mr and Mrs Spider – added costume hire to the business during 1985.

“Costume hire was a roaring success for us,” Mrs Gibbon said.

“All of the costumes had to be made in the shop, not like now where you can buy everything online.

“We had a couple of people making costumes at the shop but many a night I’d be sitting up til all hours making things.”

During the late 1980s Spiders added singing telegrams to the business.

“Peter wrote all of the rhyming text for the telegrams and then they’d be read out at people’s parties and celebrations,” Mrs Gibbon said.

“There were gorilla-grams and everything you could imagine. People still come in the shop and mention that Peter read out a telegram at their party all of those years ago.”

Mrs Gibbon said the Smollett Street shop was at its busiest selling fireworks in the two weeks leading up to the Queen’s Birthday weekend.

“Peter and I used to go and set fireworks off for people at their weddings and functions,” she said.

“Then fireworks were banned in the mid-1980s.”

Spiders Costume and Party Shop moved to its present Olive Street site in 1996.

Mrs Gibbon said her sons Stephen, Rohan and Matthew and their families, staff and guests would celebrate the end of an era at the shop on October 31.

“We’ve always had very good staff – like Robyn Reeves (18 years) – and that has been the thing that set us apart,” she said.

Mrs Gibbon tried to sell the business without success since Peter died in November.

She still hoped to sell the costumes, accessories and sewing machines.