The Shrewsbury repair cafe giving old items a new lease of life

In a culture of over-consumerism and next-day deliveries, repair cafes have sprung up as an antidote in a bid to prolong the life of items we already own.

More and more people are now using their skills to help mend both sentimental and everyday objects, with people spurred on by the success of BBC One’s The Repair Shop queuing up to get a slot.

In Shropshire, the Shrewsbury Repair Cafe has exploded in popularity since starting in 2017, going from half a dozen volunteers helping a few people to more than 45 helpers assessing 50 to 60 items every month.

The events take place on the third Saturday of each month from 10:00-14:00 at the town’s United Reformed Church, with people usually waiting outside from 09:00 in the hope of getting their item looked at.

Pete Martin, a repairer and administrator, specialises in mending clocks, although he refuses to call himself an expert.

“When my father died, the family passed on his wall clock to me,” he said.

“I saw a local course about repairing your clock so I went and managed to get it repaired and it still ticks in my house.

“Ever since then, I’ve enjoyed trying to get clocks to work again.”

The volunteers will take a look at any object, as long as it is able to be carried to the event by the owner.

“We see if it can be repaired, whether we have the skill and the expertise in the room,” Mr Martin said. “We try and make the repair as fun as possible.

“The idea is to try and help people to repair the item themselves if they can, but the vast majority of the time, we sit there and repair the item for them.”

The first ever repair cafe was hosted in Amsterdam in 2009, established by a Dutch journalist, Martine Postma, who felt there must be a way of reducing fixable items being sent to landfill.

Shrewsbury’s cafe can mend everyday items like vacuum cleaners and clothing, but has also seen an increase in more sentimental objects, such as ornaments or family heirlooms.

“I think that’s partly because people have nowhere else to take them or they’re being priced way out of the market,” Mr Martin said.

“I had a lady come in with a 1920s gramophone player. You can’t take that down to Currys.

“People now see it as a place to come to for advice on things that are special to them.”

One touching anecdote concerns a wooden Lazy Susan, brought in by a woman who has now become one of the cafe’s volunteers.

“She’d had it engraved in pyrography for her wedding day, so it had her and her husband’s name and the date of the wedding burnt into the surface of it,” Mr Martin said.

Unfortunately, the pyrography had started to come away from the one-off piece.

“Sadly, her husband died fairly soon after they got married,” Mr Martin said.

“She said ‘I don’t know if anybody can [fix] that’. We deep-engraved everything into the Lazy Susan so that it was going to be as permanent as could possibly be.”

Restoring people’s beloved objects can unearth a wealth of emotions.

“Sometimes I have people bring me a clock in that’s not been going for a long, long time and just to hear it striking and ticking away brings back a lot of memories,” Mr Martin said.

“As well as the laughter, we do have tears, but they’re mostly tears of joy.”