Men and their sheds

As many wives have long known, sheds correspond to some vague but profound psychological need in men. Men like to disappear into their sheds, where they can surround themselves with old and battered familiar objects in happy, undomesticated disorder. Here they can tinker and improvise undisturbed, store salvaged nails in tobacco tins, pile up flower pots and hang tools from the walls, and sit in a broken armchair, listening to an ancient transistor radio, bathed in the faint perfume of timber, earth and creosote.

Some might argue also that a shed is a kind of cave: a refuge where time stands still, a sanctuary where men can commune with themselves, beyond the tyranny of the vacuum cleaner, before reemerging into the fray of the real world.

Many writers use sheds, Roald Dahl and Philip Pullman being perhaps the most famous recent examples.

It is said that sheds are men’s equivalent of women’s handbags: intimate, private and personal spaces, which have their own mental geography, and offer similar reassurances.

The relationship between men and their sheds has become the focus of study, notably in the book by Gordon Thorburn called Men and Sheds, published in 2002, which looks at 40 men and their sheds, the various uses they put to them, and their relationships with them.

That said, increasing numbers of women are also adopting sheds as a practical response to their need for a dedicated space that they can call their own.

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