Farewell to Aardvark Books

One day, about seventeen years ago, I was on one of my second-hand book quests in the Marcher country between England and Wales when I saw a sign on the main road reading 'Aardvark Books', with an arrow pointing along a minor turning. It happened that not long before I had followed a similar enticement, only to end up at a warehouse selling (new) text books to schools, so I ignored this one, reasoning it was probably the same kind of thing. This was a mistake, leading to one of my several rueful book-collecting mottoes: 'Always Follow Signs to Books'. 

Because when I did, some months later, on another expedition, I discovered a very large second-hand bookshop in a converted barn with, it said (and it certainly looked it), some 50,000 books. On that visit, I remember swooping on some Algernon Blackwood, some E.F. Benson, some Michael Innes, and quite a lot else. No subsequent visit, it must be confessed, was quite as rich, as no doubt other collectors got wind of this new trove, but there were usually some titles to make a visit worthwhile, often unusual and obscure.

In any case, the book barn's setting, in deepest rural Herefordshire, was charming. Around the village churchyard was a remarkably serpentine topiary yew hedge, for all the world like some green dragon slumbering here in between ravaging the countryside. Above the little settlement was a mysterious, Machenesque hill, with a wooded grove on its crest, from which I always expected to see smoke from some secret shrine arising. The village is also a focus for artists and craftspeople, including a hand-printing fine press, a potter, a jeweller and a watercolourist. 

The bookshop's website explains its origin:  

'Aardvark Books was founded in January 2004 by Sheridan Swinson and the late Edward Tobin, two career publishing professionals who decided to start a book business that reflected their love of books, and their combined half-century of experience in the book trade. Begun in some disused pig sheds on the outskirts of Leominster in Herefordshire, Aardvark Books quickly moved  to Brampton Bryan where they found a home in one of the buildings on the Harley Estate, The Oxford Barn. In the autumn of 2007 they moved to their existing premises on the edge of the village in the old Manor Farm Buildings.'

The bookshop later added a cafe, serving good quality coffee, fine loose-leaf teas, soup, croques monsieur and highly tempting cakes. For both the books and the food, the book barn became an essential resort on any visit to these parts, a waystation on the way to Hay-on-Wye, and it has often featured in my essays on book-collecting tours in this region. When presenting our selections at the till, there would usually be the opportunity for a chat with the affable proprietor, Sheridan, about our choices or his own recent reading.

In February, though, came the announcement that he and his wife Sarah were to give up the business, and today (4 April) was the last day, going out with a big Easter sale, music, crafts stalls and visits from well-wishers. Bookshops and their proprietors often come to seem like old friends, even if we only see them a few times a year and pass the time of day for a few minutes. This is part of the reason why I often wistfully remember where bookshops used to be, and look out for them, as if they might somehow still be there.

There are, it seems, plans in train for new owners to take over the business in some form, perhaps from the end of this month, so it will be interesting to see how this develops, hopefully still involving books and food. In the meantime, all good wishes to the team at the Book Barn. And - remember to follow the signs!

Update:  hurrah! A new business, Elderwood Books, is to open at the book barn on 29 April 2026, continuing as a bookshop (new and second-hand) and cafe. 

(Mark Valentine) 

 

 

Second-Hand Bookshops in Britain: 2025 Report

 

This year there was a net increase of about 90 shops in the UK selling significant numbers of second-hand books, taking the overall total to about 1,375, probably the highest number there has ever been. While about 88 outlets were found to have closed or changed business, around 180 shops opened or were newly discovered.

These figures are based as usual on my count of reports to The Book Guide, the volunteer-run online guide to second-hand bookshops. This covers the full range of places selling a decent stock of second-hand books, including privately-owned businesses, full size charity bookshops or book rooms, units or rooms in antiques centres, a few market stalls, and a few private premises open by appointment. Not all  are general bookshops: some specialise, eg in railways, children’s books, crime fiction. All these types have always been included in similar totals in the past. I estimate that the number of bookshops other than those run by charities has remained broadly constant at about 900 for around 40 years.

Some well-loved traditional bookshops were amongst those that disappeared, including Peak Dragon Books of Matlock, Derbyshire: The Bookshop of Wirksworth, also Derbyshire; Grove Rare Books of Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, Last Century Books, Innerleithen (in business for over 30 years) and Oxford Street Books of Whitstable, Kent, which was on Platform 1 of the town’s railway station. About a quarter of those that closed were charity bookshops, and a few more were somewhat marginal gift or curio shops with books. The main reasons for closure included retirement, lease breaks, change of career, changeover to new books only, and a few fairly recently opened shops. The number of closures quoted includes a spring-clean of out-of-date entries: the Guide relies on reports from readers.

But doughty spirits continue to open new second-hand bookshops. Cooper Hay of Glasgow added an Edinburgh bookshop to celebrate their 40^th anniversary; Cover2Cover was opened in Nantwich, Cheshire; Bastion Books of Berwick  are military and exploration specialists; The Book Cabin set up shop in Newbury; Ironbridge Books in Shropshire opened another but separate bookshop next door; a new Chichester Bookshop was launched in Sussex; Addyman’s Books of Hay-on-Wye added Christie & Doyle, a second crime fiction shop next door to their first; Volta Books of Wellingborough is a welcome addition in Northamptonshire;  and The Book Warren, Auchengruith is to be found in a remote location in South West Scotland. In an unusual move, an online bookseller whose main stock is in a warehouse has now also opened a town centre bookshop, in Great Yarmouth.  These are just a few of the newly opened, second-hand bookshops this year. Good fortune to them all!

In addition, assiduous bookshop detectives among The Book Guide’s volunteers have uncovered previously unrecorded places, such as Reader’s Good Books of Petworth, West Sussex: ‘This rather good shop has been open for years,’ noted super-sleuth Booker T, ‘but its small-town location and limited online presence have resulted in a distinctly low profile. The shop, which is quite small, specialises in "old and interesting" books for both the general reader and the collector’. Even the most comprehensive and well-informed guide is sure to miss some examples, and it is always worth asking around or simply exploring the byways. It all adds zest to the quest. 

As noted before, another development is the spread of a small selection of second-hand books in a variety of places. For example, almost every historic church visited on a book-hunting holiday this year had second-hand books for sale, usually several hundred each. There were also several  curio shops with up to a dozen bookcases of miscellaneous stock.  None of these of course count as ‘second-hand bookshops’ and they are not included in The Book Guide’s listings or my numbers, but the keen collector will keep alert to them. They add to a picture in which there are a wider range and number of opportunities to buy second-hand books in Britain than ever before, as my own shelves, and indeed floors and attic, will readily attest.

Other posts this year have celebrated 'The Golden Age of Second-Hand Bookshops' (now); asked 'Do Charity Bookshops Drive Out Other Bookshops?' (no); enjoyed 'Exploring Shrewsbury's Second-Hand Bookshops'; and drawn attention to a post at the Spitalfields Life blog on 'The Bookshops of Old London'.

Note

The Book Guide lists: ‘Any business with a significant stock of secondhand or collectable books, that welcomes visitors at advertised times or by prior appointment. This includes permanent units in antique markets, private bookrooms and weekly market stalls. Stock can be small if good or specialised, but books should be the only or main holdings. Thus, a charity bookshop should be included, but a general charity shop should not, unless it has a room's-worth of books.’

(Mark Valentine) 

The Golden Age of Second-Hand Bookshops

  

In several posts, including this historical profile and this recent report, I have suggested that second-hand bookshops in Britain have, on the available evidence, not reduced in number. This is certainly the case if you include full-scale charity bookshops, but it is also broadly true if you don’t. Indeed, there are more than twice as many now as there were for most of the 20^th century.

Now to be perfectly fair to book-collectors who repine that second-hand bookshops have declined, I think they usually have in mind a certain sort of bookshop, variously described as “traditional”, “old-fashioned”, “classic”, “proper” or “real”. These will typically be privately-owned, by a solo proprietor or a duo, in or not far from the high street, and with several rooms of general stock, mostly vintage and mostly hardback.

Optional extras include piles of books on the floor, a wireless softly playing classical music, cool jazz or cricket commentary, a cat, some comfortable seats, a cellar or attic, and creaking stairs. These represent the Golden Age of the Second-Hand Bookshop.

But when was it? The answer of course is that it was in the book-collector’s youth or their university days, or at most the decade or so following. Girls, boys, film, music, were all much better then too.

The good news is that there are still second-hand bookshops just like that, quite a lot of them. And the comments of assiduous contributors to The Book Guide will tell you pretty clearly where they are. I know best those that are in the North of England, where I live, and in the Marcher Country where I often go on bookshop expeditions.

Let’s look at Cumbria, in the far North West of England. Here there is the wonderful Book Case, Carlisle, occupying the whole of a large Georgian town house, with four floors, many rooms, very wide-ranging stock, and with a café, records and art as well. You could quite easily spend a day in there. Then to the west, on the coast, there is the characterful Michael Moon’s in Whitehaven, another rambling town house with a very large stock.

Penrith has two bookshops, Beckside, opposite the parish church and the Giant’s Grave, two floors, several rooms, plenty to look at, and Withnail, small but a discerning and unusual stock. In the next town, Barry McKay at Battlebarrow, Appleby is a veteran bookseller of literary and antiquarian books, with a stock of about 5,000. 

Further south, Cartmel has the long-established Gatehouse Bookshop, with a small but distinguished offering, and Ulverston has Sutton’s, ‘an appealingly old-fashioned shop’ says arch-browser Booker T, who also notices a newly-opened high street shop at Dalton-in-Furness. Daisyroots at genteel Grange-over-Sands describes itself as a “friendly, independent family business established in 1994”.

To the east, Sedbergh has the very large Westwood Books in the old cinema. In the Lakes, Keswick Bookshop is described by a recent visitor as having “the delights of a REAL bookshop”.

Well, there’s eleven bookshops in one (former) county that ought to meet any Golden Ager’s criteria, and that’s in one of the least populous places in the country. It does, however, attract many visitors, and I suspect that is part of the secret of surviving second-hand bookshops now. You ideally need both loyal local customers, and a thriving holiday trade. The places in Britain that don't have a second-hand bookshop tend to be – how shall I put it? – places without many other attractions either.

But this First Eleven, to use a cricketing term, are not the only players in the Cumbrian second-hand bookshop field. There is a Second Eleven too. They might not quite live up to the superb professional standards of the top team, but they do offer some similar qualities. And after all there were various types and standards of bookshop even in the glory years.

In Cumbria there are also two veteran bookdealers with shops open by appointment, a tourist information centre with stock from over a dozen professional book-dealers, a new bookshop with some second-hand stock, a museum bookshop and an art gallery bookshop, two antiques centres and a curio shop with books, and two specialists, in archaeology and botany. And that is without counting the 9 charity bookshops and a few others.

Ah but, the mischievous might think, you have chosen Cumbria because it so well-blessed with second-hand bookshops. Not so, but, in any case, I estimate that there are about 20 other counties (or equivalent) with a similar picture of around a dozen “traditional” bookshops and around a dozen others.

Some smaller counties don’t have this scale, of course, and never did (eg Rutland), the most remote don’t (eg Northumberland, though it has the splendid and huge Barter Books at Alnwick), some city centres don’t, and there are other less well-served places. But the book collector who doesn’t mind using The Book Guide for a bit of reconnaissance and is prepared to travel will still find plenty of places where they can easily find a long weekend’s worth of browsing.

Furthermore, two developments in the last few years offer opportunities that were not there in earlier decades. The first is the emergence of hybrid places such as cafes, pubs, galleries, with books also available. Now sometimes it must be admitted the stock is fairly marginal and difficult to get at in amongst the other activities, but there are others where it is high quality and easier of access, such as the splendid 35 West in Leominster, Herefordshire, which offers great coffee and cakes and has a discerning selection of literary books (from a professional book-dealer) all along one wall.

The second development is in book barns, with very large stock. When I started collecting there were not all that many really big bookshops: the two at Hay-on-Wye, Richard Booth’s and the Cinema Bookshop, were notable and exciting precisely because they were so huge (and open longer hours). Now, however, there are several more: Aardvark in Herefordshire, for example, and the Astley Book Farm in Warwickshire, or Pendlebury’s in the Welsh hills.

Taken together with the wider variety of places selling some books, this all adds up to quite a strong range of possibilities. The population of Britain has grown considerably and the stock of second-hand books is, despite pulping and discarding, likely to be accumulative. Further education has also expanded substantially. More readers and more books are likely to lead to more bookshops. Though there are some countervailing influences, such as e-books and online booksellers, there seems to be a stubborn affection for real books and real bookshops.

The surprising news I have for melancholy book-collectors is that the Golden Age for Second-Hand Bookshops is not a chimera. It does exist. It is now.

(Mark Valentine)

Picture: Sign for Brazen Head Books, Burnham Market, Norfolk, a charming traditional bookshop.