Village shop in a garage

10:40am Saturday 8th November 2008

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Families in Rowde are being urged to get behind a plan to open a community shop.

A group led by parish councillor Jackie Bawden has been working on the project for the past 12 months and now a site for a shop has been found.

This week a planning application was submitted to Kennet District Council to convert a garage attached to the Wadworth owned Cross Keys pub in Marsh Lane into a shop.

Mrs Bawden said the steering group had scoured the village trying to find the best site and had discounted 13 locations.

She said: “We looked at every shed, building and open space. We wrote to Wadworth suggesting a shop within the Cross Keys and they wrote back offering the garage at a peppercorn rent.”

The group has been in discussion with Devizes Community First about funding.

Mrs Bawden said the group had to raise £40,000 and match funding would be available through Community First.

She said: “We will be setting up a society to run the shop and we will be asking villagers to contribute money to become members. We have not yet decided on the cost.

“We would pay somebody to be the shop manager and need volunteers to help run it. It would be run on a not for profit basis so money raised would be ploughed back into the shop.”

The village has been without a shop for more than five years when the shop and post office in the High Street closed. Another shop used to be near the George and Dragon pub.

Mrs Bawden said: “We carried out a questionnaire of residents and it showed that 86 per cent of people would regularly buy items from a shop in the village.”

She said the shop would sell newspapers, stamps and basic food items. Fruit and vegetables would come from Wiltshire Vegetables based in Bromham and jams, pickles and craft items from CARE Rowde.

An exhibition detailing all the sites looked at was held in the village hall on Saturday.

More than 100 people attended and Mrs Bawden said no-one was against the garage as the site.

Rebecca Harrison, 76, and Liz Read, 29, are both on the steering group.

Mrs Harrison, of Tanis, said: “I have to go to Devizes to shop but I also go to Bromham farm shop. There’s a lot of elderly people in Rowde, me included, who would use a shop in the village.”

Mrs Read, of High Street, said: “I shop in Devizes and online.

“It would be really handy not to jump in the car to drive to Devizes every time I need to go shopping.”