New fears for Portobello as Sam Cam's favourite butchers join the casualty list

A spate of shop closures including David and Samantha Cameron's favourite butchers has triggered renewed concerns that Portobello Road is losing its "unique" market atmosphere.

Kingsland Edwardian Butchers has shut after 163 years' trading, to the dismay of customers. It follows the closure of the Progreso fairtrade coffee shop, which has been replaced by a branch of the Kurt Geiger shoe chain.

There are also fears for The Travel Bookshop in Blenheim Crescent - the inspiration for the store run by Hugh Grant's character in the movie Notting Hill - which is up for sale.

Alex Dumbell, a 22-year-old student who lives in the area, said: "Portobello Road is known for the small shops and independent businesses. If they were to go, it would lose its atmosphere.

"I applied for work in the [Progreso] café, I didn't apply for a job in Starbucks up the road because it would mean something different. In smaller, independent businesses, you get a sense of the people who run them, which makes the area what it is."

Haydn Field, who owned Kingsland Edwardian Butchers for 20 years, said he had to close after the agents for landlord Octavia Housing threatened to double his weekly rent to £1,300.

Customers included models Twiggy and Claudia Schiffer, comedian Rik Mayall, actor Tim Roth and writer Tom Parker Bowles. It was well known for serving sherry and port as shoppers queued for Christmas turkeys.

Mr Field said the rent was £170 a week when he took on the shop in the early Nineties, but as it rose along with business rates he had to lay off two of his sons.

"The Octavia Housing trust is supposed to be non-profit making. But when my wife Denise wrote to the 10 directors about the rent rise, all they said in their reply is 'when can you drop the keys off?' " he said.

Tim Burke of Friends of Portobello said: "Octavia Housing needs to be held to account, their board needs to take immediate action before any more small shops are forcibly thrown out."

Michael Barnham, who owns Barnham Antiques, said: "When most people come here it is because they want to see something unique to Notting Hill and buy something unique."

A spokeswoman for Octavia Housing, said: "We made no formal application to increase the rent, which had not gone up since 2005. But it is a commercial asset and we need that money to run our charitable activities such as our elderly day care centre in the borough."