The Christmas issue of the Idler magazine is out. This time round I turn my shedlike spotlight on scientific sheds, including those of Marie Curie, Edward Jenner, and the Cosmic Ray Shed outside Harvard University. Available everywhere fine magazines are sold but always better to secure it at a discounted price via a subscription.
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Well worth a read.
Pic courtesy SMART
Historic England has revealed its Heritage at Risk Register 2026, its annual snapshot of the health of England’s valued historic buildings and places.
Over the past year, 197 historic buildings and sites have been added to the Register because Historic England believes they are at risk of neglect, decay or inappropriate development. Among them is Charles Dickens's writing chalet in Rochester, Kent, which it describes as "increasingly fragile and needs repair", although happily Shedworking revealed earlier this year that it had been given a major financial lifeline from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Over the past year 85 sites have had their futures secured via the hard work of local communities, charities, owners and funders. These included Dr Jenner’s Hut, the birthplace of vaccination in the Garden of the Chantry in Gloucestershire, following its addition to the Heritage at Risk Register in 2025.
Pic courtesy Medway Council
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It remains an evergreen issue, how to ensure you have excellent wifi service to your garden office. The latest suggestion comes from Jake Brigstock, gaming correspondent of The Independent who clearly knows more than a thing or two whereof he speaks, who has been roadtesting the TP-Link Deco BE3600 mesh wifi system (full details at the link).
He goes into some considerable, though useful, detail about how he set up his own garden office and concludes: "Having done this and installed these units in this way, I’ve gone from not even getting wifi throughout my whole home to having a fast, stable and reliable connection not only throughout my home but also in my new office." It's not cheap but it does sound promising.
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A lovely timber and brick studio in London from O'Sullivan Skoufoglou Architects (you can see lots more images of it by Rory Gaylor at the always excellent Dezeen) for a filmmaker and artist couple. Features include a bathroom, and large built-in desk, and exposed timber roof and brick structure.
I've been writing about Dylan Thomas's writing shed on and off since Shedworking started 20 years ago, but I've never seen these photographs before, taken by Welsh photojournalist Geoff Charles in 1955 on a visit to Laugharne.
These are held by the National Library of Wales, and show Charles's images of the exterior and interior of the writing shed, as well as his boathouse and other local spots, including his grave (large thanks to the NLW for its generous Creative Commons licence).
By a remarkable coincidence, I also stumbled upon photos taken around the same time by American photographer Rosalie Thorne McKenna of Thomas's shed which you can see at the Vassar website here (which has stiffer reproduction permissions). They are equally worth a look.
