Is it a shed? Is it a police box? No, it’s a Time and Relative Dimensions in Space machine and it’s just appeared in the back garden. Alex Johnson is on its trail

Sheds come in many guises. Beach huts, shepherds’ huts, garden offices, saunas, home gyms, art studios, yoga workshops, pub sheds, BBQ huts, church sheds, hobbit sheds, treehouses. But perhaps one of the most surprisingly popular forms is the TARDIS shed, which for several years had its own category in the annual Shed of the Year awards.

One of the beauties of Doctor Who’s sentient Time and Relative Dimensions In Space transporter – a police box repurposed into a space-time travelling machine – is that over the decades of its televisual existence it has changed height, shape, and colour. Therefore, a degree of artistic licence in reproducing it for domestic shed use is absolutely reasonable. Those of you who fancy having a go should head towards the dedicated forum at tardisbuilders.com for helpful advice and plenty of photographic inspiration.

“The number of TARDIS sheds on the site and their success in the Shed of the Year competition over the years shows that they’re one of the most beloved types of shed in the country,” said Shed of the Year competition founder and the man behind readersheds.co.uk Andrew Wilcox, himself a keen Whovian (the fourth, Tom Baker, is his favourite). “It’s so impressive how sheddies put so much effort into making them as close to the real thing as they can, and they are certainly happy to tinker for hours in their TARDISes.”

One of those Shed of the Year finalists was Gary Dorr, an American cabinet maker who spent many years living in Llangyfelach near Swansea before recently moving back across the Pond. This self-professed Whovian ran his business, the accurately titled Tardis Cabinets of South Wales, from the workshop shed in his back garden, building by hand a range of sizes out of hardwoods, mainly poplar, ash, oak, and birch.

Similarly, Doctor Who fan Paul Foden – who has also made a model dalek, a cyberman, and a K9 – spent a year building a 12ft tall TARDIS in his back garden in Stoke-on-Trent, including a control panel inside and working sound effects. Indeed, his TARDIS is actually bigger on the inside than it seems from the outside, with a deceptively small entrance leading into a much larger hexagonal shed cunningly concealed behind it.

If creating our own time-travelling shed sounds too much like hard work, there are off-the-peg options. Cheshire Sheds (cheshiresheds.co.uk) are among suppliers who have built bespoke TARDIS sheds for clients, while Stockton-on-Tees-based Dods Fencing and Sheds (doddsfencingandsheds.com) is currently offering a 5ft x 5ft double door TARDIS shed with 12mm shiplap cladding for £1,247.

Another option is to keep an eye out on what’s coming up at auction houses. Propstore in particular has sold various authentic BBC TARDISes in recent years. A replica of the one used by the 11th and 12th Doctors, which appeared at various trade shows, was sold for $21,250 in 2023, complete with remote-controlled sound system offering the famous de/materialisation sound and catastrophe alarm. Last year, a TARDIS used for the 2013 film An Adventure in Space and Time about the making of the series was auctioned off for Children in Need and went for £12,600. And most recently, a half-TARDIS made for exhibition purposes was snapped up for just £2,394. Other smaller versions of the Doctor’s spacecraft include the book exchange that sits on the foreshore of the town of Penguin in Tasmania.

While the TARDIS is usually seen as a police box, its appearance sometimes changes thanks to its Chameleon Circuit technology which enables it to create different outer shells to remain unnoticed when landing. With a nod to this remarkable capability, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger produced a replica version clad entirely in reflective mirrors which went on show at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2001; and later in the grounds of the Museum of Natural History in Oxford where it was furtively taken apart by Doctor Who fans overnight desperate for some memorabilia.

Along similar lines Clare Knox-Bentham and Adriano Digaudio from the Manchester School of Art designed The Invisibility Tardis Shed of Navel Contemplation for the 2015 RHS Tatton Park Flower Show. This not only featured a mirrored exterior “stealth effect”, but also a mirrored interior for additional reflective improbability. Now that really is out of sight.

Alex Johnson runs Shedworking (shedworking.co.uk) and is a former judge of the Shed of the Year competition.

This article is from Idler #110.

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