A new word has entered the vocabulary of environmental protest: megashed. A well-organised "stop the shed" campaign is currently centring on a disused RAF airfield just outside Andover, next to the busy A303, where Tesco plans to build an enormous distribution warehouse. Yet big sheds — those huge, windowless warehouses you see at major road intersections — have been around for nearly 40 years, and for most of their history they have been left off maps, unmentioned and ignored by the general public.

Outside the business pages, it will probably be Tesco the bulldozer that makes headlines, as it is lambasted for supposedly demolishing traditional high streets and replacing small shops with its category-killing megasheds.

First there were the friendly neighbourhood ironmongers. Then came the out-of- town superstore. Now, courtesy of Kingfisher, comes the next generation of DIY outlet, the mega-shed. Called Depot (and appropriately given the American pronunciation Dee Poe), at 70,000 sq ft these are twice the size of typical B&Q stores and stock double the number of lines.