Villagers in Brent Knoll gathered to watch their Postman, Tim Dean, open their new Community Shop in a unique way on Saturday (October 16th).
Tim Dean, who has been Brent Knoll’s ‘postie’ for many years, was the unanimous choice to open the newly relocated Community Shop in a Portakabin beside the Parish Hall. The move has been made necessary by the recent sale of the village shop premises.
In addition to using scissors to cut a ribbon, Tim delivered his opening speech with a creative poem, as featured here. He also picked up his guitar to sing a self-written song.
Since launching the community shop venture during the first lockdown in 2020, Brent Knoll residents have backed the facilities, with more than 140 residents becoming shareholding members and 20 people coming forward as volunteers to help run it.
David Sturgess, Secretary of Brent Knoll Community Shop, which is now a Community Benefit Society, says: “We all love Tim, our wonderful postman: but all the people who turned out to share a bacon or sausage bap at Saturday’s opeming also learned how talented he is as a poet and minstrel.”
“Tim loves his role as our postie, but we all know that he has the talent to be the next ‘Adge Cutler’, with superb lyric-writing skills,” he added.
“From the moment that we opened our ‘emergency shop’, we have had amazing support from our community – as shareholders, customers, volunteers and helpers,” added David.
It is expected that the shop will ultimately move into a permanent community building to be built in place of the current public toilets block outside the village hall, subject to planning consent and enough financial backing.
