While many Shropshire post offices are battling for survival, the boss of one rural outpost believes his branch should have been closed down years ago. Ben Bentley meets a bemused sub-postmaster.

With its pretty hanging baskets and colourful display of potted plants, the post office in the small north Shropshire village of Adderley is a peaceful and bustle-free venture.

Indeed it is so peaceful and bustle-free that while dozens of Shropshire subpostmasters are clamouring to prevent their post offices from closing down, Tom Butter, Adderley’s 79-year-old subpostmaster, takes a slightly more relaxed view of his own post office’s fate.

“I don’t know why we’re still open – we don’t do anything,” he says. “Any sane person would have closed it down years ago.”

You can see what he means. Trade is slow. In fact only a couple of customers come in all morning.

Tom smiles and says: “I know I’ve got one coming in tomorrow. But you can count the number of people on one hand.”

He jokes that the majority of people who come in do so only because they are lost and want directions. A recent visitor didn’t even bother coming inside – just stopped briefly in his posh Mercedes and stole the potted plants.

When Tom’s post office came up on the list of those being considered for the axe in the last round of cuts, he would have been happy to see his counter closed.

Not because he wants to see the service go – Tom is proud of his role in the community as a subpostmaster and displays on his wall in the shop a 25-year long service award.

No, the reason is that so few people use the service, largely as a result of the Post Office itself cutting back on the types of services it provides at the counter.

He adds: “I thought I will take closure. I wanted to close because I would get the compensation. Everybody goes to the supermarket like everybody else, but I’ve still got a post office.

“We were banking on us closing but now we are still open. That’s how it goes. I had a letter to say we were going to stay open which I was surprised about because bigger post offices than us were worried.”

Today the post office is open just two mornings a week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, a total of eight hours.

It’s hardly a money-spinner, and Tom jokes that the only way it would be was if they “turned it into a brothel”.

The post office counter itself is run by villager Barry Hales who volunteers his own time to run it out of the goodness of his heart.

He says: “We used to do a full week – six days a week including Saturday mornings – but we scaled it back because we did not think it was worth it.”

But he and Tom do recognise the importance of the village post office, the service and sense of community it provides.

Says Barry: “People still like to pay the bills this way and it’s still a decent service, particularly for older people or disabled people. If you are stuck in the village with no public transport it’s wonderful.”

When Tom converted his cottage into a shop 40 years ago, and 10 years later opened the Post Office counter, it was a bustling little business, used by all.

He says: “We had everything – groceries, an off licence, plants, the lot. Then what happened? Fine Fayre moved in and it killed the lot.”

“In the post office we used to do pensions and allowances. That’s all gone. People used to queue up for them and while they were here they’d have a few groceries.

“We used to do the paraffin. I was an Esso Blue dealer. If there was a market for it, we sold it.”

There was even room for other shops in the village. All gone now though. As has the bus service through the village, another reason not to stop at Adderley. There’s a bus stop next to the post office, but no bus.

Concerns over the future of the threatened village primary school have added to anxieties over the future of not just the post office but the community as a whole.

Despite the lack of large-scale demand for Tom’s post office, it looks as though it’s here to stay and Tom is happy to keep running it even though he is almost 15 years past retirement age.

His shop, which today sells selected newspapers, basic groceries and cards as well as stamps and scaled down post office services, is a venture he runs as “something to do”.

Not a man with idle hands, lulls in the working day might be filled with a spot of woodcarving. Tom is a dab hand with fashioning wild fowl from lumps of wood and has entered competitions around the country. Rosettes on the wall of his shop are testament to his creations, also displayed.

Tom is not complaining. He knows he provides a great service for the people who his post office and shop, and they know him for his jovial nature, wit and his knack of “having a good argument” over the counter.

It’s just the irony that his post office is being kept open when more popular ones are facing the dismal prospect of being shut down.

He says: “We are going to carry on. I don’t know why, but we are.

“It’s something to do. What would I do if I didn’t do this?”