Peebles & DisTrict Men's Shed
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A community space for men, and women to connect, converse and create. Our activities are often similar to those you might undertake in your garden shed, but rather than being on your own, we prefer that you enjoy your chosen activity in the company of others. We have only two stated aims, which are to improve health and well being by providing a space for meaningful physical activity, and reducing social isolation. Most importantly though, there has to be a laugh and a cup of tea involved along the way. The photos scrolling here show just some of what we have been up to in our journey towards our new permanent home in School Brae. Walls have been scraped and painted, floors repaired, a new power supply for our machinery installed, work benches built, model railways created and much, much more. Come down and see for yourself. What have you got to lose?
Facilites for
The Peebles & District Men's Shed Community
We now occupy three rooms on the ground floor of the Community Hub, School Brae Peebles. What was previously the indoor bowls room has now been totally refurbished and fitted with work benches and a new power and lighting supply and will shortly be equipped with £11,000 worth of brand new machinery including lathes, a band saw, a planer thicknesser, pillar drills and much more. Two of our benches have been built at a height suitable for use by wheelchair users. The old lounge bar is currently being transformed into a new social and crafting/modelling space complete with a new tea and coffee ‘bar’, and comfortable seating. There is access from here to our outside space in what was the beer garden.[/caption]
- Work benches, some with adaptations for wheelchair use
- Craft work and artists space, indoor and outdoor.
- Tools for woodworking, metal working, bike repair and light engineering projects
- Modelling space including model railway building
Tomorrow, a public consultation will be launched by Scottish Borders Council in relation to our bid of £1.00 for Hay Lodge Depot. It will run for eight weeks and we will post a link here when available. Much will be said about the fact that we aspire to take ownership of a building said to be valued at £85,000 for a peppercorn sum. We want the public to be in possession of the whole picture before they comment on this matter. Firstly, we have already spent around £7,000 of our own funds getting to this point. Various professional surveys and £3,500 safely removing asbestos mentioned below. That, we hope, shows we mean business and is a sum we would much rather have spent on improving facilities for our Members. The building is a largely unheated, damp shell with rotten structural timbers that have been there for many years. Previous authorities hid the problem under asbestos boarding but it didn’t go away. There is no kitchen, no insulation, no damp proof course, inappropriate render on the walls, damaged rainwater guttering adding to the damp issue and only one WC. We have estimates to replace the damaged ceiling joists and upper floor amounting to approximately £20,000. That would allow us to safely occupy the space. The damp ingress solution has been estimated at £30,000. We would guess, but have not yet costed, that the other work needed to make this a functional community space will be many tens of thousands. The reason we find ourselves here now is that SBC and our Common Good Committee spent the last two years trying to get us to sign a ten year lease including taking on responsibility for all of the above whilst steadfastly refusing to spend a penny on making good the structural issues in the building which they still own. Frankly, that process nearly broke us. Constant arguing over irrelevant details, presentation of multiple problems and no solutions, making us feel like we were not worth the effort. We believe we would have struggled to obtain any form of grant support under those terms but we are confident we can if we are able to present ourselves as building owners, ready and willing to roll our sleeves up. Please support us if you can. We don’t want to take over the world. We are unashamedly a men’s mental and physical health charity who just want a safe, warm space where local people can gather, craft, engineer or build in safety. Above all else they can talk. This is our catchphrase. Men don’t talk face to face, they talk shoulder to shoulder. …
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We were delighted a few days ago to receive this glowing endorsement of our bid to take over Hay Lodge Depot as our new home using Community Asset Transfer provisions. We are so grateful to our two elected representatives for their support. You can possibly imagine then how deflated we now feel having just been told that Scottish Borders Council and Peebles Common Good Committee will be unable to complete their deliberations on our proposed terms of transfer by the previously stipulated date of 24 December, which was six months from the start of the process. We have now been asked to agree to a new completion date for the process, which may not even be in our favour, of 31 March 2027. Quite honestly, words fail me. …
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We have been busy in Innerleithen this week with an unusual request from St Ronan’s residential home. Not every week we get asked for some cut out dinosaurs but we are up for most things ( who said we are a bunch of dinosaurs ourselves). Watch this space for more pictures once they are painted up to look a bit better and in place. Great job by our Treasurer Steve. …
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