
Hesket Newmarket Community Shop

Diane Scott, Hesket Newmarket’s shop dynamo!!
January 2024
If you want to find information about Hesket – ask Diane Scott. If she doesn’t know (highly unlikely) she will know someone who does! She is our very own ‘yellow pages’, gazetteer and ‘font of all knowledge’! Diane is the eyes and ears of the community and is quick to help out in any circumstance.
Diane has worked in Hesket Newmarket Shop for over 27 years and started as a part timer on July 17th 1997. She began helping Liz Crosland, the former owner, one day a week in the tearoom, within a couple of weeks she was doing two days and soon after became full time helping in both the shop and the tearoom. She speaks very highly of everyone she has ever worked with over the years.


Diane has made 36,000 mince pies!
Diane has hardly ever missed a day at work in all those years. She worked all throughout the Covid pandemic supplying many people from all over the area with regular deliveries and keeping an eye out for residents on their own, always discreet and loyal and a true friend to everyone.
She trained to use the Post Office Horizon computer system and along with Liz Crosland who was the then Postmaster, they fortunately never had a problem with the system. She underwent full training but also says, “it’s a system where the more you use it the more you learn”.
When Jonathan & Liz Crosland retired, Diane took on the baking full time and was in the kitchen all day, every day. Famous for her mince pies (who hasn’t had a Diane Mince Pie??) and in the 13 years she made them, she baked over 36,000 of them. That’s thirty-six thousand mince pies!! Competitions were held every year to guess how many were made, or latterly what small object was baked into a pie which was put on display. Every year the money raised from the competitions was donated to a good cause.
If we could bottle Diane’s energy, enthusiasm and charm everyone would want a daily dose, she is an absolute gem.
Diane was even part of the group which was set up to try to buy the shop when it went on to the market for a few years before the Crosland’s were going to retire, but happily Andy & Liz Bothamley came to the rescue and bought it. Fortunately for them Diane was there to help them quickly settle into village life.
Diane has welcomed generations of families and visitors into the shop with her warm personality and welcoming smile. Amongst those who have visited was HRH Prince Charles, he visited twice before he ascended the throne as HRH King Charles. She is equally relaxed and happy chatting with children whose names she remembers as well as MPs, High Sheriffs, reporters and the likes of actor Ade Edmunson who popped in for a butty one day.
Diane has seen many changes over the years and says she loves the community and especially enjoys chatting to the various people she meets every day and the many friends she has made; she is one of the first to welcome newcomers. Sadly, life has its flipside, she says the saddest part of the shop life is when the community loses one of its own, whether through age or accident, Diane is often one of the first to support people.
She loved working in the tearoom when it was running and looks forward to annual events like the Vintage Motorbike rally and is seen welcoming regulars back like they had never been away, even remembering how they like their tea and if they take sugar!!
Diane is an absolute stalwart and was one of the first to buy shares and is fully supportive of the Community taking over the reins, always one to go the extra mile she donates cakes and sells tickets and promotes all the Shop Committee are doing. And if that’s not enough, Diane supports many other parts of village life, runs the Millhouse Village Hall, helps with Castle Sowerby Church and until latterly was part of the Hesket Newmarket Show committee.
If we could bottle Diane’s energy, enthusiasm and charm everyone would want a daily dose, she is an absolute gem.