A mother and daughter team running a Trowbridge chip shop served customers by candlelight after the town was struck by a power cut on Monday evening.

Angie Willis, of the Union Jack, was working with her daughter, Sonia Baker, when the electricity went off at 5pm, in an incident affecting an estimated 12,000 people. She said: “It happened just as we opened. We grabbed some candles to light the shop and used our tip box for change. Thankfully, we just had enough hot food ready to last the time that the power was out.

“The power came back on after about 30 minutes and that was when we were running out of food, so it wasn’t bad timing. Some of the customers quite enjoyed it, I think, and it was something a little different.”

Southern Electric identified a fault in the network.

A spokesman said: “By about 6pm, we had 10,000 people back with electricity and then everyone was back up and running by about 6.20pm.”