“This is the best of Stratford’s many secondhand bookshops.”

Chaucer Head Bookshop - Stratford-upon-Avon

On our recent tour around Stratford-upon-Avon, we found Chaucer Head Bookshop. Established in Birmingham in 1830. The shop specialises in second hand and rare books.

A lovely bookshop filled with shelf upon shelf of books, both in the front room and two smaller rooms off to the back. Housing such a great range of books, I soon found a great and unique books, Black Beauty by comedian and poet, Spike Milligan (who my father loves so it would therefore make a great present).

In one of the back rooms curled up peacefully with the books was a dog, as a dog loving bookworm this added to the quaint delightful feel of the shop (as to me there is nothing better than reading with my dog at my side).

Being in the heart of Stratford-upon-Avon it was obvious that there would be a lot of books with Shakespeare’s works in and about him. There were also souvenir type postcards on some of his plays; we picked up two; Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (which I have mentioned in previous posts is my favourite of his plays).

Paying for the books and the two post cards (which were wrapped neatly in a paper bag), we headed to leave the shop, but were drawn to some books in a small area by the entrance. These shelves contained a lot of classics, as well as some modern paperbacks.

After looking through these books for some time we ended up with 3 more books to buy. Heading back in to pay, we joked with the shop owner that we were back again. Laughing he said “stay as long as you want”, to which we replied it probably wasn’t a good idea or we’d end up bankrupt.

~ Catherine Muxworthy (find Catherine’s blog here!)

Address: 21 Chapel St, Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire CV37 6EP

Hours: Monday 11:00am to 5:30pm, Tuesday to Thursday 10:30am to 5:30pm, Friday and Saturday 10:00am to 5:30pm

Telephone: 01789 415691

Website: www.chaucerhead.com/