Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2010/January 2011 | Page 170

food

Island Life - December 2010

Photo: Main, Vern and Jenny unveiling the new logo on the shop to
include the Deli and Café
Inset: Former High Sheriff Alan Titchmarsh opening the new
buildings, November, 2008

A store of
village values
The inspirational tale of how a shop and Post Office has
rekindled a community
Jenny Kerry and Vern Tyerman laugh
when I ask if they’d considered going
into politics, but the question is
seriously meant. We are sipping lattes
in the airy café of Chale Green Stores,
once a struggling village shop and Post
Office. What they have created is a
testament to their commitment to the
whole principle of village life.
“The current government on the Island
basically wants to urbanise us and make
us just like the mainland,” says Vern.
“There’s very little representation for
villages.”
It is a little surprising to hear such
commitment to Isle of Wight village life
expressed in the rich and rolling tones
of a USA accent. Vern was born in
London but partly raised in the US, and
170

Jenny, an Islander whose own accent
betrays a life of travel, retired to the
Island in 2000. Fixing on Chale, they
found the village shop was ailing and
threatened with closure. “We feared
that with no shop this would become
just another dormitory village, so we
felt a great inspiration to create a viable
business,” explains Jenny. The result is
more than just a shop and Post Office,
more in fact than the café and deli.
What Vern and Jenny have created is
a community centre, where people
meet and chat while buying their daily
necessities.
They had no financial help, and while
Vern insists he didn’t want it to be any
kind of charity operation, he questions
the number of grant-aided farm shops

which have sprung up. “Grants may
have enticed some people into the
market who are not able to sustain
what they started.” He wishes that
instead of financial help for producers
to sell their own foods, there could
be more encouragement of new and
different products which Chale Green,
with its commitment to quality produce,
could sell.
Jenny explains how it soon became
clear that just restoring the shop wasn’t
going to be enough. “Because we’re in
a very small village we need to entice
people from further afield. So that’s
where the deli and the café idea sprang
from.”
The possibility of the village losing
the fight to save Chale School made
Visit our new website - www.visitislandlife.com