Volunteers keep their village thriving

Brian Handley’s son thinks his father should be taking life easy and enjoying his retirement rather than getting up at 5.30am and sorting out the morning newspapers at Stillington Post Office & Stores.

He’s also a bell ringer across the road at St John’s Church but the bells no longer toll for the end of the village shop as appeared likely a decade ago.

“Mark thinks I’m crackers but it’s just one small part of the effort made by an army of us in the village that has kept our one remaining shop alive. When my wife Sheila and I came here 40 years ago the village had a bakery, a butcher’s shop, the post office and a garage.

“The flip side of getting up at the time I do once or twice a week is that you always get people telling you what a wonderful job you’re doing by keeping it open. That makes it all the more worthwhile.”

Stillington was saved from going the same way as many other villages in losing its last retail establishment due to a community spirit that has led to several awards and is as good a blueprint to a unified village approach as you will find.

This week Brian was completing a form where Stillington has been invited to put itself forward for yet another award – this time from Hambleton Council. The shop is now more than just a viable concern and a far cry from when the previous incumbents ran it to make a living.

“Stan and Jenny Nesbitt ran the post office and shop for around 20 years but they ended up working from 6am to 8pm for peanuts. They tried selling the business as a going concern but couldn’t get any takers. They applied for a change of use and that’s when an initial four of us got together to try to keep it open. We set up meetings in the village hall with the aim of trying to save it.

“We had no money. All we wanted to know was whether our fellow villagers felt the same. They did and 200 of them gave us £10 each to set the ball rolling. That wasn’t going to get us very far but it did allow us to make plans. We applied for grants, raised funds and put together a marketing strategy based on everyone giving their time freely. It’s still that way now, apart from whoever works in the post office itself as they are paid direct by the Post Office.”

Their first base was to raise enough cash to buy the property. They needed £125,000 for the building and a further £5,000 for the stock. Nothing comes cheap in Stillington as it is a desirable village location ten miles north of York and Brian points out that you won’t get anything today for less than £200,000. Despite all their efforts they were still short of £95,000 but a combination of villagers’ professional talents brought about a marketing and bank proposition that was effective in securing a bank loan for the remainder.

Stillington Community Association was formed in 2003 with six unpaid directors and one aim to run the shop and post office with as many volunteers as they could muster. Today the forces are 40 strong with some serving behind the counter, others as shelf stackers, pricing up staff, cleaners and waste distribution. When I visited it was the turn of Amy Butcher behind the shop counter and Jack Hawker at the post office desk.

Amy recently moved to the village with her parents from the hamlet of Youlton nearby.

“We wanted to be in a larger community and serving in the shop is a really good way of getting to know people. Mum and I share Tuesday afternoons here. My dad teaches English at Easingwold secondary school.”

Jack combines three shifts a week in the post office with a couple of shifts at the Blackwell Ox pub in Sutton on the Forest.

“My parents live in Stillington and I started off in here as a volunteer 18 months ago after completing my studies at university in Leicester. I’d say this is still very much a rural village that has some real characters.”

One of those characters was in the shop when I visited. Retired 85-year-old Derek Metcalfe and self-confessed storyteller is as pleased as anyone that the shop is still here.

“I was a joiner and I built the first grille for the shop. That’s going back a long time. The village has changed tremendously since I came here in 1954. I’m nearly a local now, but not quite. What they’ve done with the shop here is really good. At least we’ve still got it even if we’ve lost our other shops.”

Keeping the post office open has been a separate challenge and one that Brian and his fellow directors have seen off each time there has been a call for its closure by the Post Office.

“We’ve consistently put up a very strong argument over how well run our post office operation is and how it serves a much wider community too. My career included regular contact with MPs.

“We’re as on-the-ball as we can be and that includes the shop and post office combined.

“We haven’t inflated the prices we charge in order to make a profit. They may not be supermarket prices but they do compare very favourably with other shops. Bob Brown, one of our directors, is in charge of shop produce and visits the cash ’n’ carry twice a week. Bread, milk, pork pies and bacon are delivered every morning.

“We also stock a range of food from farms right across Yorkshire including free range eggs from Carlton Husthwaite and chutneys and jam from Elvington and Wheldrake.”

In July last year the shop, under the ownership of the villagers, reached ten years of trading. There was a special celebration as they had also completed the pay-off of the bank loan.

“Our original target was to pay back the loan in 15 years. Now that we’ve paid it off any profit will go to local organisations dependent on their needs at the time.”