What is a Repair Café?
The Golden Valley Repair Café is a part of the world wide movement of Repair Cafés. This started with the very first Repair Café opened in Amsterdam in 2009 by Martine Postma. It was a great success which prompted Martine to start the Repair Café International Foundation. Since 2011 this non-profit organisation has provided professional support to local groups initially in the Netherlands and, latterly, many other countries. Now in 2025 there are over 3,700 Repair Cafés operating throughout the world.
Repair Cafés are free meeting places and they’re all about repairing things (together). In the place where a Repair Café is located, you’ll find expert volunteers, with repair skills in all kinds of fields. You may also find help to make any repairs you may wish to do yourself. On clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, et cetera.
Visitors bring their broken items from home. Together with the specialists they start making their repairs in the Repair Café. It’s an ongoing learning process. If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Or you can lend a hand with someone else’s repair job. You can also get inspired at the reading table – by leafing through books on repairs and DIY.
In the UK we throw away vast amounts of stuff. Even things with almost nothing wrong, which could get a new lease on life with a simple repair. The trouble is, lots of people have forgotten that they can repair things themselves. Many younger people no longer know how to do that. Knowing how to make repairs is a skill quickly lost. This is a threat to a sustainable future and to the circular economy, in which raw materials can be reused again and again.
That’s why there’s a Repair Café!
Practical skills are passed on. Things are being used for longer and don’t have to be thrown away. This reduces the volume of raw materials and energy needed to make new products. It cuts CO2 emissions because manufacturing new products and recycling old ones causes CO2 to be released.
The Golden Valley Repair Café is slightly unusual in that to provide an accessible service to the population of the Golden Valley we run quarterly Repair Cafés between 10.00am and 12.30pm; normally; on the first Saturday of each month, in three different locations:
KINGSTONE, where we meet in St Michael and All Angels church in January, April, July and October.
EWYAS HAROLD, where we meet in St Michael’s Church Hall in February, May, August and November.
DORSTONE, where the meetings are in the Village Hall in March, June, September and December.
You will find a range of repairers at each of these centres, able to repair a wide range of items from small electrical items to furniture you are able to bring to the venue, dolls and other toys, jewellery, garden tools and our team of sewing ladies can do wonders with mending holes in all sorts of clothing (including that of dolls). But, please note we do not undertake alterations to new clothing. We are also able to undertake repairs on bicycles and to sharpen all manner of knives and tools.
If you want to learn how to do these repairs yourself our repairers will do their very best to show you how you go about that. If you would rather let them repair your items you can partake in a tea, coffee and a piece of cake all provided by our volunteers.
There is no charge for any of this, but we do ask that if you are happy with what we have done for you that you make a donation to enable us to pay rent for our venues, refund expenses that our repairers have incurred and buy tools and consumables that are used during each session.
Dorstone Village Hall: Located in the centre of the village opposite the village Green.
Post Code: HR3 6AN What Three Words location: scarves.opened.spoken
Limited parking at the hall, or around the village green.
Ewyas Harold Church Hall: Beside St Michaels Church in the centre of the village.
Post Code: HR2 0TX What Three Words location: royal.newspaper.elevate
Limited parking behind the hall, or in the road outside the school.
St Michael and All Angels Church, Kingstone: Opposite the Bull Ring Pub in the centre of Kingstone Village.
Post Code: HR2 9EX What Three Words location: awakes.corner.commuting
Limited parking outside church in the lane opposite the Bull Ring Pub and also in the farmyard further up the same lane.
Dates for next year are:
Kingstone: Sat January 10th (note this is second Saturday because of New Year Holidays), Sat April 4th, Sat July 4th and Sat October 3rd
Ewyas Harold: Sat February 7th, Sat May 2nd, Sat August 1st and Sat November 7th
Dorstone: Sat March 7th, Sat June 6th, Sat September 5th and Sat December 5th.
All meetings are from 10am to 12.30pm.
Golden Valley Repair Café has recently become a founding member of ARCHES the Association of Repair Cafés in Herefordshire. The association will have all current 7 Herefordshire based Repair Cafés as members. These are:
| Ledbury Repair Café | First Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Leominster Repair Café | First Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Golden Valley Repair Café | First Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Marden Repair Café | First Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Archenfield Repair Café | Second Saturday of the month in the afternoon |
| South Hereford Repair Café | Third Saturday of the month in the morning |
| Hereford City Repair Café | Fourth Saturday of the month in the morning |