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Our History

The idea of a Street Men's Shed was first raised at a talking Café held by 'Health Connectors Mendip', My wife & I had been working with Vicky Sullivan, their local rep for Street & Glastonbury, with local people with diabetes for some time, when she asked if I would be interested in helping with a meeting that she was trying to organise with the hope of starting a shed in the area.

Vicky arranged advertising and a venue for the first meeting on the 1st March 2017 at the Victoria Sports & Social Club in Street





​We were all surprised to find we had 40 men turn up!  From then we started to work to find a suitable premises for our fledgling shed, the Victoria club offered the old ground staff workshop and storage space, which was basically three garages, unfortunately these were found unsuitable due to the work that would have to be done. One of the buildings we were offered was made from recycled Argos catalogues, but unfortunately it was to small for our needs.






We continued meeting on a fortnightly basis, kept looking for premises and we had a few offers, all of which were either too small or would be too much work to get them to a safe standard for a Shed.

​One of the members told us that his wife knew of a building on The Tanyard which was part of a gymnasium where the tenant was looking to rent out part of the building. After a visit to the site we agreed that we had found a building we could use and convert into our shed.






We then set about finding funding, Vicky again came up with a contact at the Royal Voluntary Service, they were at the time funding new Sheds, with help from the ASDA Foundation and helping find contractors to help with the building work. This was the best start that anyone could ask for, we were given a grant of £2000 and a company called McCarthy & Stone offered to provide the manpower and materials to convert the building.

The work started in late September constructing the building into two workshops, a kitchen area and a toilet, this was done in two days, but the fitting out, water supply, toilet plumbing and electrical supply took around two weeks.










The rest of 2017 was taken up with decorating, building work benches, fitting new windows and a new access door to keep the cold wind out. The site landlords helped with water-proofing the roof which had a tendency to leak in heavy rain which seemed to be the norm that year. We also became members of the UK Men's Shed Association.

In  April we held our first AGM and Open day to show off our work and publicise the Shed. The Shed was officially opened by the Chairman of Street Parish council, Cllr Val Appleby and our guest of honour was Vicky to thank her for all the work she had done for the shed.








During the rest of the spring and into the summer, we managed to fill the shed with tools and machines, mostly donated by members and the public. We also steadily increased the membership up to around 40. But there was bad news ahead, the lease was due to end in October and although we had been given reassurances in April that it would be renewed we were told in July that it would not and we would have to move out by the end of October.

This came as quite a shock and disappointment, we had worked hard to get our shed to the standard that it was, during the next two months we tried several ways to enable us to stay where we were, but it became obvious that we were not wanted by the Landlord.

This meant that we needed to seriously look for a new shed. We had offers from the Red Brick building and the Glastonbury regeneration scheme, but neither were suitable because there would be several months, if not years, needed to get the buildings into a fit state to occupy. Again a friend of a member came to our aid: We were told a farm in Walton were looking to re-purpose some old chicken sheds and we were offered one.

The first time we saw the building, we wondered what we had let ourselves in for, but John & Steve the owners did some sterling work cleaning out the building and leaving us with a large empty space.  We then set about dismantling the old shed at the Tanyard, we intended to re-use as much of the materials as we could, everything was taken out - toilet, kitchen units, plumbing and all the panelling, and taken to the new shed. We believe that we used at least 80% of the old building in the new shed.






The Royal Voluntary Service again came to our aid with a grant, but this time we did all the work ourselves and over the winter months we worked on converting the building into two workshops, kitchen and socialising area and again the disabled toilet. 

The new shed is at least twice the size of the old, so much more room for benches, machines and tools. To be honest, we should thank the landlords at the Tanyard for making us leave, as we now have a much better and well fitted-out Shed for our members.

So by our second AGM, we were again ready for our second grand opening with around 20 guests, refreshments and displays. The Shed was officially opened by the Street Village Crier. 






Through out 2019 we increased our membership up to around 50, and we also opened the Shed up to lady Shedders who's membership quickly grew to 10 members. The Shed was growing steadily, more donations of tools has meant that we have now got some very good quality tools and machines, we have grown so much that we had to build a storage shed between the buildings to store members work and surplus tools.  During July we had a visit from the TV personality Kate Humble who was researching for a new book and wanted the opinions of older people about repairing and refurbishing items instead of buying new. We also did our second recording for GFM with Alan Trinder, this led to rise in membership and several more donations to the shed.

August 2019 brought the annual Shedfest and UK Men's Shed AGM, this is held at Worcester University, it was a great day out with displays workshops and a chance to chat to other Shedders. In the evening the presentation of the awards took place, and the Street Men's Shed was awarded the 'Health and Wellbeing Project' award for our work with our vulnerable members, we were also came runners up in the Shed of the Year award, so all in all a great day out.






But as we all know, with what looked like being a great year ahead for us the Covid-19 pandemic struck and like all other Sheds we had to close, we managed to open again in June until the second lock down in November, but we did manage to hold our AGM where we officially changed our name to The 'Street & Walton Men's Shed' to do with our location in the village of Walton.





In March 2020, like many other Sheds we had to close, with the average age of our members being over 75, we could not take any chances, but when the rules were relaxed we were able to open for the maximum of 6 members at a session, we managed to open for 6 sessions a week which gave the majority of members a chance to attend, we had to close again in the November until we were allowed to open again under the rule of 6 again. it was a difficult time for the Chairman who had to ensure that we had a first aider and a supervisor on each session so that we could operate safely.




We have now reopened fully to members and been able to hold the belated AGM that should have been in April. we have had a change of Chairman and Treasurer IAW our constitution which says that an officer of the committee can only do 3 years in the post. We hope that now the shed is fully open and with the new committee we will be able to move the Shed forward to greater heights and help more of the older people in our community break out of social isolation and loneliness.






On September 4th 2021 we were able to have a display stand at the 6th annual Merriman Park Fun Day, on a fine sunny day we had a great turn out and support from local people who made the day one if not the best for the park Community Committee funds. The Shed had plenty of enquiries and a visit from the High Sheriff of Somerset and the Street Parish Chair Laura Wolfer, they both had questions about our shed and shedding in Somerset.









After several requests from members the shed has rented a Defibrillator for use in the unlikely event of a member having a heart attack. The Defib. is fully automatic and can be used  buy untrained members, but as we have 10 First Aid trained members and each session must have at least one First Aider there is a trained member available at each session.