Dozens of people watched on in sorrow as a popular lift which has been at the heart of Folkestone for hundreds of years was shut down.

The Leas Lift at the Lower Sandgate Road in Folkestone was put to half track which symbolised its closure on Friday.

Spectators stood at the seafront in the car park and at the top of the monument on The Leas at noon when the carriages moved.

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The Leas Lift Community Interest Company (LLCIC)announced at the start of January that it was "calling it a day" due to an improvement notice served by the Health and Safety Executive which required a new braking system to be fitted.

It dubbed the current system "unreliable and prone to failure", a statement that has been flatly denied by the operators.

At a cost of £80,000 the LLCIC said it could not front the money and have the new system fitted before its deadline in March.

Failure to do this work would lead to prosecution which is why the company has chosen to liquidate.

Managing director Terry Begent made a final speech inside the foyer, he said: "Firstly, I must stress that the braking system on the lift is not faulty, as some have said, nor is it unsafe.

"It has safely carried at the last count 35,336,384 people over the last 131 years - it is merely the victim of change in regulations."

He said it was a "tragedy" because he believed it will cost the owners more to mothball the lift until the future of the seafront development was secured than pay for the new brakes.

In an emotional farewell, Mr Begent added: "The lift may be owned by the Radnor Estate but it belongs to the local community and it is to the that we now pass the baton to ensure the lift has a future.

"My final act today is to give the driver of the upper station the traditional signal to start the lift on its final journey under our control, in a desperate hope that this won't be the final journey that it ever takes."

Read the full story including interviews with the lift's driver and chief engineer in Wednesday's Folkestone and Hythe Express.