Post offices offer all manner of extra services these days, but there’s only one that sells fish and chips.
Allonby post office, between Maryport and Silloth, now shares premises with The Codfather, the village’s celebrated chippy.
The businesses had been run separately, albeit next door to each other, by Adrian and Pamela Twentyman.
When they decided to emigrate to Portugal, they sold to Adrian’s brother David and sister Vicky, who knocked down a dividing wall to run them as one.
Manager Rosamond Blaney said: “A lot of folk have said they’ve never seen a post office in a chip shop before.
“But people were pleased that the post office was being kept open. If we hadn’t done this it would have closed.
“That would have been a real shame because the village has a lot of elderly people who would have had to travel to Maryport or Silloth.”
Mrs Blaney, 46, used to cover in the post office so had the necessary training to take charge when the two businesses merged in July.
She added: “The post office is now open when the chip shop is open.
“That’s Thursdays through to Sundays in winter, and in summer every day except Tuesday until eight o’clock at night.
“This summer we’re looking at opening seven days a week.”
Allonby is unique in having a post office inside a fish and chip shop.
But it is becoming increasingly common for village post offices to move into other unrelated businesses as a way of staying viable.
At Croglin, in the Eden Valley, the post office opens on a Tuesday morning in premises owned by Croglin Toys. Outside Cumbria, post offices have opened at Baltonsborough Farm Shop, near Glastonbury; the Badger Hounds pub in Hinderwell, North Yorkshire; a church in Stow, Lincolnshire; and a pet shop in Holmbush, St Austell, Cornwall.