'We make the utility wear we couldn't find elsewhere

Makers and shopkeepers Brett Shergold and Stephen Comer

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Many people leave the city to pursue a life in the country, but when Brett Shergold and Stephen Comer left London in 2019, they had no real plans for what might lie ahead.

‘I just wanted big herbaceous borders,’ laughs Brett, who had previously worked in music merchandising. “We'd had enough of office life and wanted more space, a bigger garden and to do something more creative – but we didn't know what.’

The duo are speaking to me from The Country Crib, their double-fronted store and studio on Sherborne's historic Cheap Street in Dorset. Behind them, a pegboard displays beautiful and useful home and garden tools – Niwaki spades and trowels; carpet beaters and feather dusters; and brushes in every imaginable shape and size. In front of them is an Edwardian glass cabinet in and on which there is plenty more to covet, including florist's snips, Nutscene's candy-striped twine and Brett's own hand-sewn creations - bright waxed organic cotton aprons, tool rolls and bags alongside linen scarves and eye pillows. So how did dreams of billowing borders in the country turn into a shop in a market town?