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Welcome to the newly formed Women's shed based in Bamber Bridge, Lancashire
It all started when Cllr David Bollenberg started up a Men's shed in Bamber Bridge. It was very quickly a success and went from strength to strength.
Cllr Emma Stevens watched the men's shed group grow and wondered if there was room for a Women's shed in Bamber Bridge. She began by researching what groups there were for women. She found there were groups out there but they were all either during the working day or for a specific craft or interest.
Emma then started to post on Facebook asking if anyone would be interested in coming along to a Women's shed group which met on a Sunday afternoon. She managed to get funding for the meeting room costs for the month of October and planned, if everything went ok, to start the group up formally from January 2026.
The first meeting was held on Sunday 5th October at the Bamber Bridge Methodist Church. Emma turned up early and was nervously waiting for people to arrive. And arrive they did. There were eight of us at the first meeting. What struck me as unusual was the way everyone was willing to offer to organise different events and offered suggestions of speakers they'd like to hear speak to us. Our two hours was up very quickly and we all made plans to meet again the following week.
At the second meeting we were amazed at how relaxed we were in each others company and how much we had all been looking forward to seeing each other again. Only six of the original members came but we did have three new faces to welcome.
We decided to have a Jacobs Join for our last planned meeting and we also welcomed our first guest speaker, Diane Elleray from Dai'an Holistics.
We asked if we could keep the group going as we really didn't want to wait until January to meet up again. So we carried on meeting in November and the first two weeks in December.
The Methodist Church was advertising a craft fayre on 29th November and we decided to have a stall to try and raise some much needed money to fund the meeting room costs.
I believe we had three weeks to plan for the fayre. It really is amazing what a group of proactive women can do when they put their minds to it. We all had something to bring to the stall whether it was making fudge and mars bars slices, crochet angels, snowflakes and bookmarks. Knitted sprouts, handmade cards, jewellery, stick on nails, christmas bags, keyrings and cupcakes made by a members chef partner.
We all pitched in to help man the stall and we had a very successful day.
We had also started a WhatsApp group that has really been a godsend for us all. We have a safe place to vent if we are having a bad day. We can share photos of our pet in the pets corner. We have a shed kitchen group to share recipes or ask advice. We also have groups set up for each activity we have planned to make it easy to find information. This allowed us to keep in touch with each other outside of our meetings.
It also means that we can ask all members to vote on particular events or activities. We send out a feedback form after each meeting so we can find out what is working, what isn't working and adjust going forward. Yes we are a group run by an executive team but every single member can have a say in how we run things and offer suggestions.
A few of us met up on Thursday 11th December for a Christmas meal at Ayla's Tapas in Bamber Bridge, we all enjoyed it so much that we've booked another get together there in February 2026.
For our final meeting of 2025 we had a Jacobs Join and Secret Santa. Emma dressed up as an Elf to distribute the presents.
We have an executive group that had a meeting with a Community Development Officer from South Ribble Borough Council to get advice on what we needed in place to be able to obtain more funding and become a properly constituted community group.
We had our Inaugural Annual General meeting on Friday 2nd January and we elected the following people:
Emma as chair
Jan as Secretary
Kim as Treasurer
Anne as Safeguarding Officer
Jillian as Social Media and Email Manager
Sara as assistant Secretary
Sue as assistant Treasurer
We also adopted our constitution, Terms and conditions and membership form. How exciting we are now a fully constituted community group. We just need to spread the word and get more members.
Our tagline is 'helping local women combat loneliness and social isolation one day at a time' which we think is the perfect explanation of what we are about.
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