Bookshop Review: Barter Books
Tucked away in the northernmost corner of England, Barter Books can be found in Alnwick - a small town in Northumberland. The shop is a complete showstopper with lots of unique features, and is easily one of the best book shops that I’ve ever visited.
Barter Books is housed in Alnwick’s beautiful Victorian train station, which was decommissioned in 1968. Today the space is simply magical. As well as containing shelves of more than 350,000 books, the shop has roaring fireplaces, comfy seating and working model trains that rattle around the tops of the shelves.
There’s also a cafe called the Station Buffet, which is located in the station’s old waiting room and serves a variety of delicious cakes and lunchtime staples. They even have a separate ice cream parlour that’s open in the summer!
As if that’s not enough, towards the ceiling you’ll spot the Writers Gallery mural, which was painted by Peter Dodd and designed in collaboration with the owners of Barter Books. This incredible mural contains 33 life size portraits of famous writers including Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. It really is a sight to behold and adds to the overall atmosphere.
By this point I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that Barter Books is a place that has a wondrous air about it, and I spoke to several other visitors who were completely in awe of what they’d found.
Specialising in second hand books, the shop stocks both fiction and non-fiction titles encompassing a wide variety topics. It’s the sort of place that you can spend hours browsing, and its very difficult to leave empty handed! Fortunately they also buy books in return for store credit: you can find out what they’re currently looking for on their website here. I was pleased to find that the shop sells its own merchandise as well, and I treated myself to a mug that I now use as a pen pot on my desk at home.
To find Barter Books, you’ll first need to travel to Alnwick which, inconveniently, now doesn’t have a train station. Fortunately the shop has a car park on site, and you can also get a bus from the neighbouring town Alnmouth, which does in fact have a train station. The bookshop is a little way out of town, but we found to be a walkable distance.
What else is there to do in Alnwick?
There’s plenty of things to keep visitors occupied. Alnwick Castle, which you can find in the opposite end of town, is a major tourist attraction, having been featured as the original Hogwarts in the first two Harry Potter movies. The castle itself has been very well preserved, and they run informative tours and broomstick flying lessons throughout the day (yes you read that right - broomstick flying lessons!). We had enormous fun exploring the castle and can highly recommend a visit.
In town you’ll also find an eclectic collection of shops selling local goods including gifts, chocolate and gin. There’s two other bookshops as well that are well worth a visit, the Alnwick Lions Bookshop and the Accidental Bookshop, as well as Alnwick Gardens which has a fascinating poison garden.
Barter Books is open every day from 9am - 7pm, including Sundays and bank holidays (except for Christmas Day). Let me know if you’ve been, or if it’s on your bookshop bucket list!
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