The garden shed provides men with the last refuge to get away from it all

For where the old thick laurels grow, along the thin red wall, You find the tool and potting sheds which are the heart of all.

— The Glory of the Garden by Rudyard Kipling

THEY might be tatty, cramped and smelly but, they’re also a wonderful refuge. The American male is the chief executive of his Den — a kind of sad B’s boardroom — but for the average Irishman, there’s nothing to beat the garden shed.

Long ago evicted as the Man of the House, the Irish male has taken to the shed with gusto, as the huge growth of the Men’s Shed Movement in Ireland shows. Apart from the momentary sanctuary of the loo, it is his sole retreat — out of range of predators and tormentors, the children and spouse.

There among the rusty shears, 10-year-old tins of paint and discarded hammer-action drills, he is free to rummage, daydream, obfuscate and ruminate while escaping domestic chores and screaming kids.

Now, though, it emerges that all that time wasting has not been wasted at all. In fact, mucking about in the shed will help you live longer, according to Alan White from Leeds Metropolitan University. “The idea of a shed is something that fits with the male psyche. It’s a very relaxing way of spending time,” says Dr White, the world’s first professor of men’s health.

Men find it therapeutic to potter around doing odd jobs, he says.

After active lives spent in work, most did not want to “sit around talking”.

“Women talk to each other; men like to talk while immersing themselves in a task,” says Dr White.

“That’s the way they deal with emotional and practical issues.”

“They know what a shed means and they feel comfortable in that setting.

“Men find doing things relaxing, and that in itself is good for their health.”

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, might have agreed. Although not much of a gardener, he loved to hibernate in his shed and most of his plays were written in a wooden hut at the bottom of his garden. Likewise the children’s writer Roald Dahl, whose family plans to have it restored and put in a museum.

By tradition the shed is a male preserve and in the best-run households there is an unspoken understanding that it is out of bounds to women and children.

As for being tatty and smelly, well, Luv, we’re not just talking about the shed, are we?