Middleton Tyas Village Shop
Services Offered
We keep a range of white and rose wines ready chilled. Just what you need on your way home from work.
Are you a roast beef fan?
Or perhaps you would like to be but try to cut down on the amount of red meat you eat. In that case our buffalo steaks may be just what you are looking for. They are as meaty and succulent as beef but have less fat and lower cholesterol than a similar cut of beef. The same is true of our buffalo burgers and kids love them.
Fresh Whitby kippers
Moors Fresh, one of our main suppliers, specializes in bringing locally produced Yorkshire fine foods to local shops like ours.
We are delighted to stock plump fresh kippers straight from Whitby. They are vacuum packed for longer life and sold individually so that, if you are the only kipper-lover in your house, you can still give yourself a treat.
Rick Stein, eat your heart out!
MARKET FRESH
Carrick’s supply us with fresh fruit and vegetables every Tuesday and Thursday. Then the shop is really bulging! They don’t just respond to our regular order. They tell us what is pick of the crop and give us advance notice of any seasonal specialities so that we can pass on to our customers whatever is freshest and best.
Still spring-cleaning?
Never started? Well, there’s more to life than housework but even so, everybody runs out of the basics sooner or later. We keep a good range of washing powders, cleaning products, shoe polishes, furniture polish etc. You’ve no excuse!
The Village Shop branches out!
It started with making lunchtime sandwiches for people popping in on their way to work. Then we started to cater for the occasional small meeting. Now we are able to cater a finger buffet including sandwiches and quiches for small events such as family parties, meetings and small conferences.
Village Success Story
Wandering around the lanes of the attractive village of Middleton Tyas you could hardly believe that you are only a mile away from the main A1 dual carriageway at Scotch Corner. The village is on the northern boundary of North Yorkshire only a stone’s throw from the Co Durham border. With a population of 700 about half of the community is retired and the majority of the working population commute to employment centres throughout the region.
Open for Business Again
The village shop is in decline. But a community working together has brought a new one into being and helped it thrive in one North Yorkshire village. Chris Berry reports.
Rural shops are closing at the rate of 300 per year in England and Wales and four years ago the North Yorkshire village of Middleton Tyas, just a mile east of Scotch Corner, became a part of that statistic.
But the closure of a village shop doesn''t mean that another cannot be opened, and the residents of leafy, tranquil Middleton Tyas have shown that community spirit can still win the day – even if it means a lot of hard work in the process. Theirs is a blueprint for others to follow and resident Jill McMullon tells of how today''s village shop came about.
"We had a shop in the village for over 100 years, which was taken over by a family 10 years ago. When they decided to move elsewhere, four years ago, they tried to sell it but couldn''t until they had turned it into a residential property. That left us without a village shop and, with a lot of our population being elderly, there was quite an outcry.
"To be honest, the shop is a lifeline to many, so we held a meeting in the village hall (where the shop is now situated) and put a small group together to pursue the idea of opening a new shop. We then sent a questionnaire to every house in the village asking whether one was definitely needed, what people would like to see in it, and how they wanted it run."
The previous shop had also doubled as a post office, which meant that villagers had lost another facility, but the post office was reopened within six months of the shop shutting. Jill says: "That too was a vital service, and we were delighted that it was back up and running so quickly. We couldn''t get the shop going at the same time because the hall premises were at the time being used to cook school meals. Then a brand
new school was built and opened two years ago with all its own facilities, so that gave
us the opportunity to open up the shop here."
While the post office is managed separately from the shop, and not on a community-run basis, it is also situated in the Memorial Hall (the village hall). Jill is keen to stress the work of all of the management committee and others who have assisted.
"It''s certainly not been all about me. People like Alan Siddall put in a great deal of work on our funding application and we were particularly fortunate to have someone like Lindsay Deeble, who is trained in garden design, to put together our lovely garden with our Women''s Institute, that now makes our village shop look so inviting from the outside."
When they started, none of the management committee had any previous experience in retail to fall back on, which makes their efforts all the more creditable. "We all started from scratch, so we went into it absolutely blind. I think we''ve all certainly learned a lot. It''s never easy to run a business and this isn''t just about a table with a few tins of beans on it. Our shop is a proper business, that is pleasurable but it has its difficulties. Luckily we have great staff, three employed full-time, and a committed management team."
Like any business though, the shop can only survive if it is used by its residents to the extent that it breaks even. So far that hasn''t been a problem. "We made a very slight loss in our first year," says Jill, "But we have just released our second-year figures and we made a profit of £5,000. Because we are a community shop, with 100 shareholders from both Middleton Tyas and our neighbouring village of Moulton, the shareholders vote on where any profits should go, whether that''s to finance something for the village hall, the church or the school, or further into the shop itself."
Of course, in this age of supermarket shopping, Jill doesn''t expect everyone to commit all of their shopping to the community store. "Not everyone shops here, but the vast majority come in at least once a week. There are some who have never used it, but then there are others who will be in two or three times a day. We bake our own fresh bread every day in the shop and have lots of local meat, fish, dairy products and fruit and vegetables.
"We also get a lot of business from outside the village. One lady comes up regularly from Halifax because of the local produce we provide, but most of our business comes from a 10-mile radius."
With the shop being inside the Memorial Hall, there isn''t a traditional shop frontage, and it doesn''t have a particularly large interior, but it more than makes up for all of this with the quality of what is on the shelves, where there seems to be a great selection.
"We have our own speciality biscuits and cakes, and our wines are pretty extensive," says Jill. "We like to think that we''re catering for all ages and tastes."
Middleton Tyas property commands a very high price and it is very easy to put its villagers'' community enterprise down to the fact that here is a population that is not under as much financial pressure as some.Whether there is any truth in that is another matter, but its people are to be applauded for their willingness to work together for the good of each other. Village spirit is as alive and well here, it seems, as it has ever been.
Jill''s experience mirrors that and she hopes their shop will continue for many years to come. "My mother came to live here 20 years ago and I came for a holiday and never left, I liked it so much. Our community shop is vital to the village. A lot of residents come in for their newspapers in a morning and people are often gathered outside catching up on local news. If it was ever to close it would be a major blow to us all – and probably even more now than when the previous shop closed."
That seems unlikely so long as Middleton Tyas has such a dedicated team of people who, although they knew very little about running a retail business, have learned fast.
But not every village may have as much gumption as Middleton Tyas. Watch out for the shop when you next travel through the village. Entering the village from Scotch Corner, when you reach the Shoulder of Mutton pub (on your right) carry on through the snicket of road that opens out once again to the quaint buildings that adorn the village. Opposite the white signpost is a left turn, and the village hall and shop is on the corner.
Article from The Yorkshire Post, 22 July 2006
Please see http://www.yorkshireposttoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=2155&ArticleID=1645312