JUST six weeks after a 30 foot steel cabin was dropped from a crane onto a piece of derelict land in St Mabyn, the pop up building has been transformed into a new community shop complete with wooden cladding and a pitched roof with natural slate — thanks to the hard work and enthusiasm of the local community.

Officially opening the new St Mabyn Community Shop on Monday with the help of pupils from St Mabyn Church of England Primary School, BBC Radio Cornwall presenter and local resident Martin Bailie praised the fantastic response from the local community which, he said, demonstrated that ‘out of adversity comes triumph’.

The transformation has been carried out by a team of volunteers from the local community who were determined not to lose the last shop in their village when the St Mabyn Post Office and Stores announced it was planning to close at the end of August after trading for more than 100 years.

Research shows that about 400 village shops close every year in rural Britain — more than one shop closure every day. St Mabyn was determined not to add to this statistic and immediately set up a working group to look at ways of saving their shop.

“St Mabyn once had at least 14 shops, two petrol stations, a blacksmiths and an abattoir,” said Graham Smith, chair of St Mabyn Community Shop Limited. “This was the last shop in the village and its closure would have spelled the end of St Mabyn as a ‘community’ — forcing many local people to travel to either Bodmin or Wadebridge for their groceries.”

Following a series of public meetings, and with the support of the parish council, local Cornwall Councillor Stephen Rushworth and North Cornwall MP Scott Mann, the village set up a Community Benefit Society and began raising the initial £30,000 needed to buy and equip their new village shop through the sale of community shares.

So far £20,000 of the original target has been raised, with 65 individual members of the St Mabyn Community Shop benefit society.

On August 14 an enthusiastic group of local people gathered to watch the delivery of the steel cabin to the village. As one group of volunteers got busy converting the steel container into a shop, others stepped in to sell newspapers from the nearby snooker room on a temporary basis when the former stores stopped selling them on August 24.

With the roof and timber cladding provided by Philip Mutton, of Trebur Estates, and constructed by builder Gary Bushen and his team, and the roller blinds provided and fitted by Shaun Counter, the original steel box was transformed much more quickly than originally anticipated.

As well as selling the usual range of groceries, sourced from both local and national suppliers, and newspapers and magazines, the new community shop will offer a ‘click and collect’ service for those who prefer to shop online.

It will also act as a collection point for prescriptions from the local GP surgery and will take over running the post office services when the contract with the former stores ends at the end of this year.

Staffed entirely by volunteers, the shop will be managed by Neil and Gill Embley, who retired 12 years ago after running the village shop for more than a decade, and have now come out of retirement on a temporary basis to support the new venture.

More than 60 people have volunteered to help in some way, with around 30 working in shifts serving customers in the shop, which will be open from 8am to 6pm Mondays to Saturdays, and from 9am to noon on Sundays.

Among the guests at the recent opening ceremony was Cornwall Councillor Edwina Hannaford, the cabinet member for neighbourhoods, who praised the local community for getting together to save their village shop from closure.

“This shows the power of local communities to get things done,” she said. “Last weekend I saw this community spirit in action in my own town of Looe when local people joined together to save the music festival. Today it is the turn of St Mabyn residents who have secured the future of their village shop.”

While members of the St Mabyn Community Shop Limited will be focusing on ensuring that their new venture runs smoothly over the next few weeks, they are already looking at ways of expanding the range of local produce available in the shop. They are talking to a local dairy farmer about using his milk to produce local cheese and other dairy goods, and will be stocking local meat, eggs and fruit and vegetables.

For Mr Smith, however, this is not just about selling groceries — it is also about providing a vital community contact for vulnerable and isolated members of the local community.

“For people who live alone a trip to the village shop to buy their bread and milk can be the only time they come into contact with anyone else.” he said. “As well as keeping the shop open, we are also inviting people to become volunteers which will help them build new friendships and contacts within the community as a whole.”

Transforming a steel box into a fully stocked community shop in just six weeks is an incredible achievement for a small village and members of the steering committee are full of praise for the hard work of the volunteers who made it happen.

“From the people who painted walls and put up shelves, filled in the paperwork or got up early to sell newspapers, to those who have donated money or bought community shares — we could not have done it without your support,” said Graham.

“We now need to translate this incredible community spirit into people buying things in the shop. In many ways opening the shop is the easy part — the difficult part is to keep it open 364 days a year. To do this we need an income of around £3,000 per week — which means we need customers to buy much more than newspapers.”