PERTH — Duncan's Hardware, the city's last independent ironmonger, has died at the age of 74, leaving Perth residents unable to buy a single screw for the first time since the reign of George VI.

For more than seven decades, Duncan's was the place to go when you needed one specific thing. One screw. One washer. One hinge for a cupboard door installed in 1971. Staff would listen to your vague description, disappear into a wall of 2,000 tiny wooden drawers, and return moments later with exactly the right item, sometimes before you'd finished describing it.

"I went in with half a broken tap and said, 'It's like this but the other bit,'" said retired joiner Hugh Morton, 79. "The man looked at it, went 'Aye,' and came back with the other bit. It cost 12p. I nearly cried. You don't get that at B&Q. At B&Q, a teenager tells you it's in aisle 47, then you find aisle 47 and it's garden furniture."

Duncan's was also famous for selling things that had otherwise disappeared from the modern world: paraffin, loose nails by the quarter-pound, mousetraps that "actually work", and a brown coat that every member of staff wore for its entire 74-year life, possibly the same coat.

The shop is survived by three vape shops, a phone case kiosk, a "luxury" barber that charges £38 and a Turkish restaurant that is, admittedly, very good. It was predeceased by a fishmonger, a tobacconist and a shop on George Street that sold only kilts and tablet.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday at the empty unit. Mourners are invited to bring a single screw and place it on the doorstep. Officials expect thousands of screws, and have warned that removing any would require a specialist tool, which can no longer be purchased anywhere in Perth.