17th June 2026
Sipping a freshly brewed coffee at a polished wooden table in Tethera Tearoom, it’s hard to imagine this cosy space was a shop storeroom just a few months ago.
Local people took ownership of Hesket Newmarket Community Shop in early 2026, and were keen to expand the building’s role at the heart of the village. The management committee identified that the storeroom at the side of the shop would be perfect as a social space. They applied to Cumbria Community Foundation for funding to transform the room and were awarded £10,000 from the Matson Ground Fund to create a community hub – a welcoming space for people to meet, to combat loneliness and rural isolation.
Simon Hewitt, Chair of the Hesket Newmarket Community Shop management committee, said the aim was that, as well as being a social space, the hub would host training sessions, such as IT coaching sessions, drop-in sessions for healthcare professionals, and fun nights for young people.
He said: “The hub will form a key strand in our aims to combat rural isolation and loneliness within our community, and it will also act as a safe place of refuge in times of power outages and flooding, something the area is prone to.”
The villagers of Hesket Newmarket have a history of community action. The name Tethera – Cumbrian for ‘three’ – was chosen because the shop is the third community business in the village, after the pub and brewery.
The Matson Ground Fund was founded by Alex and Samantha Scott in 2025 and aims to strengthen communities by supporting them to respond to local need. It funds projects that bring people together to address shared challenges, encourage social action and improve local spaces.