The Corner Shop

My links with this area, through my family, go back a long way, but my husband and I actually came to live in Broadmayne in 1988. Together we own and run the Corner Shop and Post Office in Main Street. The shop has for a long time provided something of a focus for the community of Broadmayne. If people have news to share, the shop will often be one of the first places they come.

There are some older folk who no longer have their own transport, and for them the shop becomes even more important – some of them do all their weekly shopping here. I believe that the more frequent bus service established in March 1999 will benefit the village, particularly in giving a regular service to Dorchester. But there seem to be some indications of difficulties in Dorchester itself – the very high business rate for shops means that the town could contract in its significance as a shopping centre. For Broadmayne shoppers, no doubt, the most significant development of recent years has been the building of a Tesco supermarket on the outskirts of Dorchester; many people in the village use Tesco for their main shopping and I do fear that, in the end, the village shop will be forced to close because of the pressure from supermarkets.

However, convenience and cost mean different things to different people; if the proportion of older people in the village continues to increase, it is possible that the significance of the village shop will be greater for a larger number of people, and therefore it may continue to be viable. In any event, there is a sense in which the number of retired people help to make the village what it is. They are more available to take part in the activities of the village: indeed, they run many of them. There is a good deal of choice and the village hall is well used for many of these. There are some holiday cottages in the village too, so during the year we always get a good number of visitors coming into the shop.

I must say, I don't think life in the village is as much fun for the children as it ought to be. There isn’t the freedom to enjoy the countryside as there was when I was a child. Nowadays there are so many dangers and threats that parents have become much more wary of allowing their children the freedom to go wherever they want. I'm very sad about that. And I'm very saddened by the behaviour of some children in the shop – I mean shop-lifting – and the reaction of parents to it.

However, Broadmayne remains a wonderful place to live, surrounded by some beautiful countryside. I just think it could be better still!

Carole Haslam