Sheddies how about an authentic Bletchley Park Hut 6 Door Handle to open your shed?

As you know Bletchley Park is our charity for Shed Week 2010 and we will be running a charity auction (in the run up to Shed Week 5th July 2010) with all the funds going to Bletchley Park, we have items from Sarah Beeny, Duncan Jones (of Moon), shed judge Alex and the god father of Men and Sheds, Gordon Thorburn.

But the lovely lot over at Bletchley Park have also given something special- a piece of history that money can’t buy (oh yes it can now!), an internal door handle from the famous and inspiration Hut6.

Authentic Hut 6 Interior Door Handle for the auction. Steeped in history – imagine the hands that would have touched this!

I bet any sheddie/history buff would love to have the handle from the home of the Enigma on their shed, so keep an eye on shedblog to find out when the auction starts and bid bid bid for #bpark

Hut 6 was a wartime section of Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine ciphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma. Hut 6 was established at the initiative of Gordon Welchman, and was run initially by Welchman and fellow Cambridge mathematician John Jeffreys.

Welchman’s deputy, Stuart Milner-Barry, succeeded Welchman as head of Hut 6 in September 1943, at which point over 450 people were working in the section

Hut 6 was partnered with Hut 3, which handled the translation and intelligence analysis of the raw decrypts provided by Hut 6.

Friday Random Sheds : Pirates, yoga & gallery

Some great sheds from the the magic that is Random

Vote for them and the other sheddies, and vote often

yoga sanctuary

yoga sanctuary - Marian Turner
Marian Turner
on the decking
Wooden

Wood Shed & Dog Shed

Wood Shed & Dog Shed - Scott Evans
Scott Evans
Woolfardisworthy, Devon

Jeff’s Shed

Jeff's Shed - Jeff
Jeff
Back yard

The SHED gallery

The SHED gallery - POOL ARTS, MANCHESTER
POOL ARTS, MANCHESTER
Levenshulme, Manchester
Wooden

The Lady Sarah Out of Worthing

The Lady Sarah Out of Worthing - Reg Miller
Reg Miller
Southend-on-Sea, Essex

Pallet building to Save the World…

A great build over at instructables.com

My middle school class designed and built a basic prototype for a house made of pallets. The pallets are for the basic wall structure, and other materials can be used as sheathing, the floor, roof, etc. With a little imagination the builder can fill in the gaps.

One inspiration was Alexander Saunder’s op-ed piece in the New York Times about helping victims of a 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. His piece “Give Them Shelter ” suggested buying garden sheds from Sam’s Club en mass and dropping them into isolated regions. It is an interesting idea.

We also used several sites dedicated to a “Tiny House” movement, which we first saw in a local piece “Stuck in Vermont “. Tiny houses are houses about ten-feet by ten-feet and intended to be lived in (windows, loft beds, water and the like). There are many other sites dedicated to the movement. This movement, in turn, was inspired by Thoreau and Walden , which we read excerpts from. Many of these sources stressed simplicity and self-reliance. They also dovetailed with groups looking to solve the problems of homelessness and the environment.

Chelsea : What a shed says about the gardener

Sheddie and journo Lila Das Gupta has a competition over at her blog to match sheds with garden designs from this years Chelsea you can win a copy of a certain shedworking book.

Picture Credit: Courtesy of Helen Fickling

Picture Credit: Courtesy of Helen Fickling

They say that behind every successful man there is a woman.

And behind every successful Chelsea Show Garden there is a shed. Some contain exotic items like rose-water and lime leaves, others are cluttered with boxes of disposable plastic shoe covers. (Chelsea judges don’t take kindly to messy footprints).

While the public sees only cool, calm, sophistication on Main Avenue, behind the scenes there is a makeshift world of shanty living. At the Chelsea Flower Show, the shed becomes a home-from-home for the garden designer – a womb-like structure to retreat to, where copious cups of tea are made.

More blasts from the past : Pub Sheds

After my post about Garden Offices, here are some great pub sheds, that you may have missed.. get voting!

Pub sheds are something which has seen a massive rise in popularity over the past few years, which as a ale drinker I can see why its a great place to have friends and family over, but remember to support your local pub as well! and of course The Rugby Pub was Shed of the year winner in 2008.

The Thestle Inn

The Thestle Inn - Jayson
Jayson
Eltham

Shub it Inn

Shub it Inn - Carl
Carl
My Garden

The Merlin

The Merlin - Dan Burrell
Dan Burrell
Welling

Frog n cat

Frog n cat - Mr (fnc) frogncat
Mr (fnc) frogncat
Desborough Northants

The Dagg & Duck

The Dagg & Duck - Ivan Dagg
Ivan Dagg
Yorkshire

The Chickens Legs

The Chickens Legs - David and Helen
David and Helen
Reading

The Rum Shack

The Rum Shack - Simon Tarabella
Simon Tarabella
Garden, Gosport

70′s Shed

70's Shed - Gill and Chris
Gill and Chris
At bottom of our garden

of course there are a lot more Pub Sheds you can vote for, so go ahead.