Budding Sheds

Church Eaton, May 2025

by Ethan Johnson

You don’t really expect to find a men’s shed at a cricket club. But in Church Eaton, tucked just behind the boundary rope of a picture-book village green, that’s exactly where it is. It’s early days — they only started in January — and walking up, I wasn’t sure what I’d find.

David Cann, the chairman, was already there. Towering bloke. Big frame, bigger hands. The kind of guy who looks like he’s always halfway through digging something — or fixing something else. He welcomed me with the speed and intensity of someone who’s got a lot to say and not enough people to say it to. And that’s not a bad thing — he was generous with his time, his stories, and his honesty. He lit a cigarette, and we got talking.

Turns out David’s lived a life. Serious stuff — rough patches, big changes. He told me about how he was once dragged (his word) to a shed group by a local charity. And it worked. Changed his whole trajectory. He ended up running one in Rhyl, North Wales, and built it into a place that meant something — 150 members, people from all walks. Some struggling with addiction, disability, isolation. “It was a lifeline,” he said. Not just for them. For him too.

Now he’s here, back near where he grew up, trying to start again. This one’s smaller — more intimate. It’s basically him and a few others, trying to make it stick. Twelve members on the books, but a core group of two or three who really show up. It’s still taking shape.

Trevor turned up partway through. A music teacher, soft-spoken, plays the French horn. He had the kind of gentleness that makes you lean in to hear him talk. A little nervous, maybe, but quietly curious. Together, they’re an unlikely pair — the weathered builder and the music man — but it works. The energy was real. Friendly. Low-key. Full of potential.

We were locked out for the first hour and a half. No one seemed too fussed. We just talked. About sheds and life and everything in between. You could sense a bit of frustration — with space, turnout, maybe just the slow grind of trying to build something from scratch. But also a kind of resilience. The kind that says: We’ll keep showing up anyway.

I took some portraits on my Epson R-D1 — black and white. David’s hands were a story in themselves. I shot him outside the shed, lit by the soft spring sun, the wind picking up just enough to remind you it was still May in England. Trevor stood a little more awkwardly, but with a quiet pride. The pictures came out well. Grainy, grounded. Honest.

This place isn’t just a shed. Not yet. But it’s becoming one. And that’s what makes it worth seeing. There’s charm in the early days — in the tools that haven’t been hung yet, the projects still being dreamed up, the feeling that something’s being built, even if you can’t quite see it yet.

Church Eaton’s Men’s Shed is just getting started. And I hope they stick with it. Because spaces like this — where men can show up, hang out, talk, or not talk, fix things or just sit quietly — they matter. They really do.