Men in Sheds is a community project set up in 2015 that has created safe spaces to challenge isolation and loneliness, to encourage friendships and to learn and teach new skills. To work on personal and community projects. To come visit, have some banter and see mates!
We are now a charity and have 28 members, men and women with an age range of 33 to 89. We have Sheds in Grinstead Lane and Manor Park in Lancing and have plans for a future Shed in Sompting.
The Grinstead Lane Shed is a double garage in the garden of a private residence that was offered to us by original Shedder Howard Atwater, who sadly passed away. His widow, Julie has encouraged us to stay. We pay a peppercorn rent and the cost of heating and lighting. It is multipurpose, with hand and machine tools for woodworking as well as a table and chairs for those all-important cuppas and chats.
The Manor Park Shed is two buildings actually, The Barn, built in the 1830s that we have turned into a workshop with benches, tools and a lathe and The Cowshed that was used to store gardening tools and machinery in the past. We are currently repurposing the Cowshed to be a place where the community can come in to use some of our tools and facilities, where we can teach them to use our tools to work on their own projects.
There will be a chilling area for members with carpets, comfortable chairs and sofas. Also an I.T. area with laptops for us to teach Shedders and local people how to safely go online and be part of the digital world. Attached to The Cowshed is a garage that we have fitted out with racking to be a wood store.
If you would like to pop along to take a look at the Manor Shed, please get in touch with us via the form on the home page of our website at https://meninshedslancingandsompting.weebly.com/ or a direct message from our Facebook Page at https://www.facebook.com/meninshedslancingandsompting/
We are planning that this will be the first of regular Blogs about what we are up to. Next time we will tell you all about the funding that we have received since 2020 to boost our efforts!
Chairman – Men in Sheds Lancing and Sompting
