Upton Grey Village Shop & Post Office
Village Shop also a Valued Meeting Place
Upton Grey is a small rural village in North East Hampshire with a population of 580. The parish, covering about 2,400 acres of mostly arable undulating chalkland has twenty seven listed buildings, is a conservation area and is served by a public house, village hall, shop and post office, and church, parts of which date from Saxon times.
A hundred years ago there were several shops in the village but for the last few decades there has been only one, trading from the Old Bakery.
In 1996 the owners of the shop premises, which were part of a house, gave notice that the wished to sell the property. It was then necessary for the shop project to find alternative accommodation. Public meetings were organises and it became clear that there was very strong support for saving the shop. A number of locations were considered, the most popular scheme overwhelmingly being to alter and extend the village hall, to provide premises at the centre of the village from which the shop could continue to trade.
A campaign to raise funds was launched and donations from residents of Upton Gray, and nearby Weston Patrick, Western Corbet, Tunworth and others further afield contributed more than £50,000. With generous grants from Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council, the 21st Century Halls scheme funded by the millennium section of the National Lottery, Hampshire County Council and the Rural Development Commission, a total of nearly £100,000 was raised to meet the cost of the project.
Temporary accommodation for the shop was needed during the summer and two redundant portacabins provided a lifeline from March to October 1997. Work started in June and was completed on schedule by the end of October 1997. As a result the facilities at the seventy two year old village hall have been greatly enhanced; the main improvements included provision of direct access from the kitchen into the hall, a toilet and entrance ramp for the disabled, energy efficient lighting, storage space for equipment and a public address and induction loop system for the hard of hearing.
The village shop, combined with the post office for the first time, moved into its new premises on Wednesday 5th November 1997 and was officially opened by the Mayor of Basingstoke & Deane. As well as the usual range of standard groceries, the shop stocks a wide range of excellent cheeses, specialist and own label ranges and home made pastries, with deliveries on request. It is more than a shop and is valued as a meeting place where people can drop in at any time and be sure of finding someone with whom to have a chat.
Article from Talking Shop, Issue Ten, February 1998, by Trevor Hart, Vice Chairman, Upton Grey Village Hall and Shop Management Committee.