The mother and son team of Anne and John Wyles, who have been trading successfully in Honeystreet for over 20 years, selling fairly traded gifts, furniture and home furnishings through their India Shop business, have transformed the warehouse space into a light, airy, contemporary café with a canalside terrace.
“We have been welcoming customers and visitors to Honeystreet for 15 years,” said Anne, who recently added a luxury fairtrade bath and body range to the business, with Honeystreet Handmade.
“We were delighted to get unanimous support from the local parish council for our plans to create a community meeting space for local residents and tourists coming by car, bicycle, foot or boat,” she added.
John, also proprietor of onsite Honeystreet Boats, a boat holiday company on the Kennet & Avon Canal, said, “our focus is on delicious, fresh, and local food to promote all that is best in the beautiful environment of the Pewsey Vale. We employed local tradespeople to carry out the works and have created a warm and welcoming café space. We, wherever possible, use locally sourced fresh, sustainable ingredients. Customers are able to choose to visit us for breakfast, lunch or afternoon tea with the option of treating themselves to a chilled glass of prosecco on our terrace, as they watch the world go by Wiltshire-style!”
The café is dog-friendly, wheelchair friendly and pushchair friendly; it’s probably quicker to say it’s friendly all round!
The Honeystreet Mill Farm Shop offers fresh organic fruit and veg, as well as other staples for your kitchen and lots of lovely treats too. Well worth a visit.
Anne has been researching the local history of the site which were once the premises for Robbins, Lane and Pinnegar’s Victorian barge building business. They employed 185 local people and their designs for the Kennet Barge and Honeystreet Barge were household names. In World War 2 the site would have been useful to the RAF as part of their airfield, RAF Alton Barnes. Finally the warehouses were repurposed again for fabric recycling.
“There are clues to the site’s history when you start looking — the slope for boatbuilding, the tell-tale RAF blue used on the rafters of one building, and the buttons visible in the surface of our visitor car parking space. We are really keen to tell customers the biography of the site as we open a new chapter in its history. Anyone with local knowledge should feel free to get in touch on our Facebook account (Honeystreet Mill Café).
A light and airy café serving fresh, local food and delicious drinks. Wheelchair friendly, dog-friendly, pushchair friendly. Stunning canalside location with outside seating area and easy parking.
