A FORMER dairy farmer has turned his unused farm buildings into a thriving diversification business.

Tim Gibson from Crakehall near Bedale created YoreStore, a self-storage company making use of the empty farm sheds after selling his herd of Holsteins in 2017.

The buildings have now been given a new lease of life and transformed into custom-built, state of the art storage units aimed at both domestic and business customers in the area.

Mr Gibson said: “After we sold the cows, we were left with quite a lot of under-utilised space and started to look into our options for what it could be used for.

"Self-storage seemed an obvious choice as we are based close to the A1 as well as a number of busy local towns and villages."

The first of several planned sites, Yorestore has a total of 35 units at their Hunter’s Hill Farm site with plans for expansion over the coming year to keep up with demand.

Benefitting from onsite fire and security systems as well as wifi, the diversification has proven to be so popular that the team are now planning to create other business opportunities for local firms at the farm site including managed offices and development kitchens.

YoreStore’s manager Steve Wise adds: “We filled our available units very quickly and there is clearly a need for this type of storage in rural areas."