What is a shed?

"The word 'shed' is thought to derive from Scaed, which is an Angle-Saxin word meaning shade. Sheds were therefore functional rather than aesthetic structures."
- Gill Heriz, A Woman's Shed

About sheds

"Traditionally, women have taken time for moments of creativity within their demanding everyday lives wherever they could. They have always used small domestic spaces, andd that sometimes included sheds, for their own practical and creative needs. These humble or not so humble sheds have, undoubtedly, been the places for inspiration, for the creation of novels, paintings, and the making of gardens.
Going to the shed is both a physical removal of ourselves to 'another place," and a retreat to a space where our emotional needs are met and we can be ourselves. Our sheds are often the one place we can call our own and where we can do what we like!
In our sheds we create art, we write or make cartoons, and reach out to the world through doing the things we enjoy and which challenge us. We plant seeds, retreat, think, work, make, and mend, and have the tools of our trade around us. We collect curios and turn detrious into art. We gather totems from walks, vacations, and loves, and then artfully enshrine them or carelessly allow them to collect cobwebs on windowsills. We store spades, brushes, memories, and chitting potatoes."
- Gill Heriz, A Woman's Shed

About building blanket forts

"What is it about sheds that is so appealing? Do they remind us of the hiding plsces, of our childhood, when we made dens out of anything and everything, whereever we could, turning bunk beds, pscking cases, ruined walls, and hedges into our own secret places, and lost ourselves in the world of our imagination?
As we sit in our centrally heated houses, amid the trappings of consumerism, do we, as adults, crave the simpler life? Is there a collective primal memory of a more elemental existence that gives us direct contact with the few things we need in order to live? When we enter our sheds, we see a table, a chair, a bench, boxes of tools, seeds, a simple stove, a tea kettle. We can pretend, play, create, be ourselves, and find freedom from the paraphernalia of everyday contemporary life."
-Gill Heriz, A Woman's Shed