THE HEART OF T HE C O M M U N IT Y Village shops are a dying breed and becoming quite scarce, but community shops are looking to the future. Mary finds out more
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HE VILLAGE SHOP traditionally was always the staple part of a village. The shopkeeper knew everyone, knew their business and mainly looked out for them. And the villagers supported the shop buying most of their weekly food there, and if it had a post office, even better. But those days have long gone. The arrival of supermarkets along with increased car ownership started the death knell and then the closure of many small post offices within the village shops was the final nail in the coffin. Without the footfall of people using the post office (and the income) virtually every village shop could not survive. And this has been the case for many, if not all the villages in our area. But in many villages, particularly the larger ones, the community has begun to fight back. Like-minded residents realised the damage not having a village shop and a hub for the community was doing to village life and decided to do something about it. Committees and steering groups were set up and community shops in the last ten years or so have begun popping up around the area, and they are very welcome. A community shop is different to the village shop as it is not owned by an individual but by the village itself, made up of shareholders with a committee and the shop being run mainly by volunteers. This means that the community must pull together, commit itself and work alongside each other; which, let’s be honest can be problematic in some villages so the chairperson needs to be pretty diplomatic. The Bythams Community shop is one of our area’s newest community shops opening in June 2020. But, as with many of these shops, it took a long time to get to this stage as there’s an awful lot of work, planning and paperwork to do.
Castle Bytham and the surrounding villages of Little Bytham, Holywell, Careby, Clipsham and a few more hamlets had a village shop and post office until it closed in 2013. This meant that the nearest local shop was three miles away and a supermarket ten, so to go and buy a pint of milk meant a six-mile round trip or a twenty-mile round trip if you wanted more choice. And if you didn’t have a car you were stuck in the village with no shop and very little public transport available to get to one. A steering group was quickly set up in the village to assess the feasibility of a community shop, and where it would be located and then to draft a business plan. The committee quite sensibly decided to work in phases so different committees with different strengths could be brought in at different stages. By 2017 there was an agreement to go ahead and that it was feasible. The village was very much behind the process. Raising finance, sourcing grants, knowing who to talk to and carrying a village with you is not an easy task. But initial chairman Peter Hinton did a good job of it. And after initially finding a site for the shop, gaining planning and so on, in 2017 the process to raise funding started. This involved applying for grants, organising the architect and managing the build as well. Villagers were offered shares at £20 each, and there are 143 shareholders in total. In 2019 building work started. The shop is located on the edge of the village on Station Road, purposely so that it is easily accessible by Little Bytham and Holywell as it is a community shop for more than just Castle Bytham. It is also strategically placed as future development is planned for around it. All was going well with building and planning and then of course Covid struck. This rather set the cat among the pigeons as suddenly volunteers were no longer available and sourcing supplies
30 December 2021 / theactivemag.com
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