About the Peebles & District Men’s Shed
We started our journey a little over seven years ago.
With encouragement from Volunteer Centre Borders and local community workers, a small group was formed and a committee elected to take forward the idea of establishing a Men’s Shed in the Peebles area.
A few of us went down to Gala and visited their Shed which had been established in the Langlee Centre for a while now. Greatly encouraged, we then set about looking for suitable premises and initially set up a temporary home in the Drill Hall with a once weekly meeting.
Possibilities came and went, but we quickly realised that suitable premises where we could establish our own permanent workshops were as rare as hen’s teeth in the Peebles area.
A proposal by Scottish Borders Council to gift us an unused temporary classroom unit took up a lot of our time, but eventually failed when it became clear that planning permission to mount this unit almost anywhere in Peebles would not be forthcoming.
We were about to start a conversation with various external funders for a major grant to consider buying or building suitable premises, when the Ex Service Men’s Club in School Brae ceased trading.
We became aware of Peebles Community Trust’s intention to secure funding to buy these premises as a new Community Hub, and we were able to fairly quickly secure an agreement with them to occupy part of the building on the lower ground floor in January 2019, whilst they made progress with their funding application, and we have been there ever since.
We now occupy three rooms in the School Brae Hub, as it has become known. What was previously the indoor bowls room was totally refurbished and fitted with work benches and a new power and lighting supply. Arrangements have been made to equip this with brand new wood and metal working tools, thanks to a Community Grant from Scottish Borders Council. The old pool and darts room has become our storage area and electronics work base and the old lounge was to be transformed into a comfortable social area and a crafting and modelling space, in keeping with what our members tell us they want. Funding for this last stage of our essential development was kindly given by Peebles Common Good Fund, but once again Local Planning Policy presented an obstacle. It became clear that any alterations to the building would require Building Warrant approval, and what we thought would be a simple strip out and refurbish became a major task. In essence we discovered that there was no fire barrier between the space we occupied and the upper and lower floors and the installation of such a barrier was beyond our means. Refurbishment ground to a halt.
To compound our difficulties, our landlords arranged for a new roof covering to be installed on the building which required the removal of the two vents from the existing central heating boilers. Suddenly, we were in a position with no comfortable social space and no heating, and we have been that way now for several years.
Our landlords, Peebles Community Trust, have recently been granted planning permission to create a ramped entrance from School Brae which made access to our Shed much better than it is at present, but the issues with the building overall continued to present difficulties with asbestos being discovered, dry rot, wet rot, dampness and unsafe wiring and plumbing to name a few.
That said, our membership continues to grow and we regularly see between 15 and 20 members on our Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday openings. Why not come and join us.