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Shop history About the shop in general Special features Special projects Current events An historical tour of the building |
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Stock also includes: CDs, Videos, LPs, Cassettes Antiquarian & Rare Books. Cybercookie. Art. Children's Room. Booksearch. Coffee / tea / soft drinks. Pre-booked tours. Free parking. Disabled access. Credit cards accepted. |
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Barter Books, Alnwick Station , Northumberland, NE66 2NP Tel: (0)1665 604888 email barterbooks One of the largest secondhand bookshops in Britain | ||
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Opening Hours | ||
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October to March
9.00 to 5.00 every day including Sunday
| We are open every day except Christmas Day |
April to September 9.00 to 7.00 every day |
Back in April 1991, and in the face of a rather large overdraft, Mary Manley decided to open a secondhand bookshop - one that would be based on the swap system and called Barter Books. Her husband, Stuart, immediately took to the idea and suggested that Mary open the shop in the front room of what was then his small manufacturing plant, located in Alnwick's magnificent old Victorian railway station. From that time a joint partnership was formed that would eventually result in what the New Statesman magazine would call 'The British Library of secondhand bookshops'.
About the owners: Stuart Manley was born in County Durham during the Second World War. His professional background always revolved around business. Within the bookshop, Stuart is basically responsible for the general business management, including the Barter Books website. Outside interests include cricket, railways, (English) football, and cash flows.
Mary Manley was born in Missouri even earlier (alas!) than Stuart. (But, please note, only slightly earlier.) Mary's professional background was almost exclusively academic. Within the bookshop, Mary is basically responsible for the general organisation, ambience, and marketing. Outside interests include almost everything but cricket, railways, (English) football, and cash flows.
Finally, Stuart and Mary Manley's partnership has been based on a very happy counterbalance of strengths and weaknesses. This, tied in with a very real enthusiasm for the business as a whole, has allowed them (at last) to pay off that overdraft.
About the staff: Our mainstay - hard-working, loyal, remarkable. And remarkably eclectic - perhaps like the shop, itself. There is a manager. But no 'boss'. We have hired temporary help as young as 16 and as old as 76. Politics range from Left of centre through to Right of centre and all points in between. And, so far, everyone seems to have survived. (Well, perhaps a bit of shouting here and there, but nothing serious.) Professional backgrounds, too, are equally wide-ranging - from those you might expect (artists, teachers) to those you might not (the RAF, coal mining). As for accents, well, currently, there's North of England, Irish, London, Cornwall, and, yes, American. We like this.
TopThe building: Barter Books is lucky to be located in part of a superb old Victorian railway station designed by William Bell in 1887. At 32, 000 sq. ft, the building is one of remarkable size and grandeur for a small market town. This is because, as seat of the Dukes of Northumberland, an impressive train station was deemed necessary in the 19th century to impress visiting royalty. The branchline, itself, however, was closed in 1968 with the notorious Beeching cuts. And it is one of the ambitions of the owners that it one day be restored (see below, Aln Valley Railway Project).
We have compiled an historical tour of the building which you may follow here.
The interior: the bookshop is made up, principally, of seven rooms. Our entrance was the old Station Parcels' Room, which still has the open window with bars through which passengers would buy railway tickets. Just beyond that window was the original Station entrance, now a Children's Room. The middle room marks the beginning of the outbound platform, with the buffers at one end.
Off one side of this room and directly opposite what is now the Children's Room is the newly restored old Waiting Room which remains a place for the public just to sit, read newspapers, enjoy the open fire, drink coffee - and just get away from it all. Flanking this room is the biggest room of the shop, part of the old outgoing platform where the trains stopped. (The demarcations of the well for the tracks, now filled in with concrete, are still clearly visible.) Finally, off this long room, is the former Ladies First Class Waiting Room, now used as the Oversize Books room, while just opposite is the old Gents First Class Waiting Room, now used for rare books on history and topography.
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The shop has many extra features: open fires in the Winter, beloved by all. Coffee and cookies. A model railway acting as a link between the book columns of the central room. A mini-cybercafé (well, two computers!). Generous seating. A children's room with enough toys to allow parents and grandparents to browse elsewhere in peace. (Or so we hope.) And a whole huge room lined with glass cases containing many of the more interesting antiquarian books. (There are no rooms in the bookshop, by the way, that are open to some and not to others.)
Preservation and Restoration: because of its architecture and history, the owners have done what they can (and felt privileged to do so) to restore and enhance their holding - as and when they could afford to. To that end, the lovely old canopy outside has been re-exposed, the fireplaces put back into working order, a missing skylight glassed in, rooms replastered and repainted. All of which, to our pleasure, has brought, after an absence of thirty years, public life back to a building that was made for it.
But there's still much work to be done. And probably always will be. Just as Stuart dreams of restoring the working train, for example, I dream of restoring the entire glass roof. And we both dream of having the time to just read a book.
TopAs Stuart and I have never been any good at getting grants (please, someone, tell us your secret), we've financed various projects ourselves, as and when we could. The first and ongoing project is restoring the superb Station building, itself. But other projects have been and are important to us. For example:
The Aln Valley Railway Project: a pet project of Stuart's - the aim of which was and is to restore both the three-mile long Alnmouth - Alnwick branchline and, with it, at least part of the magnificent Station building to its original purpose. Most important, this project, when completed, would have far-reaching practical value: increased tourism; the creation of more jobs and business opportunities; and thanks to the connection with the East Coast Main Line at Alnmouth, a reliable commuter service between the Alnwick area and Newcastle. To so many of us, the whole project, and on so many counts, seemed to be a natural winner from the beginning.
Money for the project was turned down flat by the Heritage Lottery Fund (in favour of, just for starters, the Millennium Dome). European funding did come through - enough to raise hopes - but was lost again when the Lottery refused to match it. The project is now in the hands of the local Council for further development, with the ongoing support of the Aln Valley Railway Trust. It's such a potentially marvellous project, it would seem a natural. All we need (can you help?) is support.
The Website Catalogue: One of Stuart's main projects, this one connected directly to the bookshop, is our very large customer catalogue. This catalogue currently lists over 20,000 books - and rising. So that it now takes several members of staff to maintain and upgrade it. Even so, the catalogue can never contain more than a small fraction of our overall stock, with our book turnover rate being roughly 3000 per week.
Nonetheless, the enthusiastic web team, led by Webmaster Jim Walsh, do their best to bring you a wide range of the best and most interesting books in our stock - with any luck, among them just that book you've been looking for. Furthermore, this growing area of our business is aided by the booksearching metasites such as BookFinder and AddAll, which access our catalogue via our listings on sites such as TomFolio, BookAvenue, and ABE.
Mary's contributions to the website are design input, the basic text (excluding - thank goodness! - all the thousands of Catalogue entries), and the 'Pin-Ups' section on the catalogue pages. This last includes photographs of family, friends, acquaintances, customers, suppliers - in other words, it's Mary's virtual town. (Feedback about these 'Pin-Ups' would be very helpful, please - as in, do you find them interesting? Or just a total nuisance? If so, out they go!)
Artists' Commissions include:
1) Peter Dodd's 'Famous Writers' Mural. In brief, this is a huge (38' x 16') mural comprising almost forty life-size characters - specifically, famous writers in the English language from 1800 on. The mural was painted by a brilliant local artist, Peter Dodd. Two years in the execution, it must surely rank as one of the outstanding works of its kind not just in Britain but anywhere. To see the mural in detail, please click onto the mural link on our Home Page.
2) Harry Brockway's engraving of the Station front: Harry Brockway is one of Britain's foremost artists whose engravings, alone, have graced the works of such diverse writers as the Brontes, Mark Twain, Dostoyevsky, Andrew Marvell, and John Prebble. Brockway's engraving of our Station front, which combines a sure technique with a witty flourish, has had, for us, a wonderful multipurpose use (for two of them, please click onto our Smallish Gift Shop link on our Home Page). Harry Brockway can be reached through the Society of Wood Engravers.
3) William Pym's hanging lamp. A sculptor working primarily in metal, Pym has made his name here (and, increasingly, throughout the rest of Britain) through the large number of commissions, both public and private, that have come his way. Our commission, a large hanging lamp made especially for the old Station Waiting Room, combines both the sculptural and the practical. The wrought iron lamp beautifully combines a railway motif with a literary one. In the first instance (the railway motif), railway tracks fan out from a central 'station' (Barter Books) in a rose window-like pattern. In the second instance (the literary motif), each track (or branchline) ends up at mythical stations - Camelot, Shangri-La, Dixieland, Toy Town, Arcadia, Bali Hai, El Dorado, Xanadu - with each station interpreted in architectural terms appropriate to the subject. To find out more about William Pym's work, please visit his website at http://www.pymsculpture.co.uk.
4) Charles Moore's watercolour: This watercolour shows the bookshop exterior from the vantagepoint of the bottom of the curly path leading up to it. It was painted by my brother, an amateur artist of great flair and charm - and both Stuart and I loved it on sight. So much so that we have used this little watercolour for many purposes (shop leaflets, cards, etc) but most notably on the Home Page of our website.
5) Two more commissions, currently in progress, are a decorative firescreen and the restoration of the Station entranceway - stay tuned!
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