Seventy years ago there were three shops in Spaxton. The bakery on Barford Road closed soon after the war, and Kibby’s, on the corner of Peartwater Road and Bush Road, now Gramarye House, closed in about 1990.
This left Spaxton Post office and Stores in Four Forks. Under its final owner, Tony Baughan, the shop side gradually declined, and the business was only sustainable because of the guaranteed income from the post office.
The business was put up for sale in 2008. In 2010, having been unable to find a buyer, Tony put up a notice saying that he was going to close the shop, but keep the post office going until he could find a buyer. He invited anyone who was interested in running a community shop alongside him to get in touch. Two local residents did, and he put them in touch with each other. This led to the formation of a “shop committee”, whose first project was a questionnaire delivered to every household in the parish, to assess the level of the community’s wish for a shop, and/or a post office.
The first sod was dug at the 2014 summer flower show, and the shop was built by Harris Bros and Collard that autumn. The winter of 2014/2015 was an intense period of decorating and fitting out the new shop, finding suppliers, recruiting and training volunteers, and finally stocking the shelves in readiness for opening on January 31st, 2015; four and a half years after the project was conceived. For the first 8 months, the shop relied wholly on volunteers. A part-time paid manager, Karen Dennett, was appointed in October 2015.
The opening of the new shop enabled Tony to obtain planning permission for change of use of the old shop building, and he found a buyer, closed the old post office and moved away. The red oval Post office sign, and a post box, are still there on the front of the building. After a gap of four months, and after prolonged and tortuous negotiations with Post office Limited, a post office opened in the new shop, a year after the shop opened.