Slapton is gearing up to have a new village shop in the New Year.

In its heyday in the nineteenth and early part of the last century, Slapton hosted at least eleven shops of one sort or another - a haberdashers, grocers, a couple of butchers, bakers, even a fish and chip shop – but by the second half of the twentieth century it was down to one village general stores.

Now that last remaining shop is set to close when the owners retire in January 2018 – and because the shop is also their home, the village not only needs to find another way of continuing the service the shop offers, it needs to find a new home for it as well.

When this news was announced in October last year, the Parish Council immediately asked the village by means of questionnaires whether it wanted a replacement and was prepared to support it and the response was a resounding ”yes”.

A Steering Group was set up with Janice Shiner CB as its chair and the group has been working hard to bring this about. It quickly became apparent that there were no suitable premises immediately available in which to site a permanent shop, and so it was decided to go ahead with a temporary arrangement while a suitable long-term site was identified and prepared.

Thanks to the co-operation of the Village Hall Committee and the Field Studies Council a site for the temporary shop is being made available partly on the hall car park and partly on land adjacent to the FSC Field Centre.

An attractive wooden building, capable of being moved and incorporated into the permanent shop later, has been ordered and is due for delivery later this month ready to be erected by a team of volunteers.

The shop itself will also be run by a team of volunteers managed by a part time paid manager and so far nearly 40 local people have signed up to volunteer for shop duty.

However even a temporary shop needs funding and the steering group has been energetic in fundraising activities to cover the first phase of the project. The initial target of £20,000 was successfully passed during the autumn and the fund has continued to increase and is now approaching £30,000.

Both the District and the County Council have helped with contributions but the vast majority has come from villagers and local people. Janice Shiner has been delighted with the extent of this support.

She said: “This extra funding has enabled the steering group to plan for additional facilities such as an Electronic Point of Sale system to help manage pricing and stock control, which will be a great help to the volunteer staff and will ensure that the shop gets off to the best possible start when it opens for business on 3rd February 2018.”

Meanwhile planning continues to establish a permanent site, and to attract the much higher level of funding which will be required to develop it and make it work.