Last minute shoppers won't be able to purchase gifts at A.S. Cooper's home furnishings store — a fire broke out in the building last night.

No one was in the shop when fire fighters arrived shortly after six last night, they had been alerted by an automatise fire detector in the store.

An eyewitness said: "The windows were black when the firetrucks arrived, you couldn't really see in but my wife said she could see an orange glow.

"They smashed through the windows and all this smoke came out. There were lots of people standing around watching it. They seemed to get it under control pretty quickly."

Sargent Jay Donawa from the Port Royal Station said the cause of the fire is not known and an investigation is under way.

He said: "We got it under control pretty quickly and there was no damage to the neighbouring buildings. Because we were alerted (by the stores fire alarm) we got here quickly. It definitely makes a difference, if they didn't have that and this had happened at three in the morning it could be a different story."

He added that a lot of the merchandise was probably ruined from the smoke damage.