Gallery 1 — Whitley Stores Community Shop

Preparing the new home …

Following the closure of our initial store in Spindles Coffee Shop, we were offered an unused end of the Pear Tree car park by Adrian and Jackie, the current Pear Tree owners. What we thought was just an area overgrown with weeds, proved to be also a large mound of earth. The site was cleared and levelled so that setting out could begin, positioning and preparing foundation pads for the incoming cabin to sit on.

…for the old cabin

A Facebook post on the Community Shops group we are part of provided a lead for purchasing a second-hand portacabin at a bargain price. The cabin had a past life in Blunsdon, where it had been a community shop for 13 years. Having moved their shop into new premises, the Blunsdon committee were delighted to find another community shop to give their cabin a new life. The Whitley Stores team removed the cedar cladding and cleared the interior, ready for moving day.

Delivery Day - 17th October 2024

This was a momentous and nerve-wracking day! Our wide load made its way from Swindon to Whitley, via an unplanned wrong turn up Middle Lane to arrive to great excitement and an assembled crowd in the Pear Tree car park. The unflappable team from Bevans Transport calmly negotiated parked cars, overhead cables and trees to lower the cabin into place and to our great relief, it dropped with millimetre-perfect precision onto the prepared footings. Now the hard work was to begin.

Making it look beautiful

Near-neighbour David has confided in us that he was a bit dismayed at how ugly the new shop looked when it landed! But we had a plan. The volunteer building and maintenance crew set to work fitting larch cladding all round, an overhanging roof, openings for new doors and window provided by Corsham Building Plastics and decking that extended via a ‘bridge’ into the main Pear Tree car park. Services were installed, a stunning balustrade created from hazel foraged from the Scout camp site in West Ashton and we managed to get the shop lettering up in the right order.

just needs A Lick of Paint

Inside, we partitioned off one end to make a stock room and WC (as requested by the volunteers), stripped out the old fluorescent lighting and gave everything a coat of paint. Some extremely generous donations helped, including the luxurious marble counter from Bath Granite and Marble, Simply Airconditioning’s service and install of the old aircon unit and the all-important WC from Plumbstop! With the new flooring down too, we were ready to move in the furniture.

It’s Finished – ready for business

25th May 2024: Opening day! Our first deliveries all arrived and the shop was well stocked with essentials and some treats, too. The shop sits up above the road, making the deck a great place for people watching. CAWS generously purchased us a ‘Chatty Bench’ to encourage villagers to linger a while and we added to this with three more. We were donated a defibrillator from the former Melksham Hub Café, a second important facility of this kind for the village. We’re excited to be open.