A large bookshop

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Image of the day – 190

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

The photo shows the basement of Blackwell’s Bookshop in the centre of Oxford, the famous university town in the UK.

Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford is huge

You can get a good idea of size from the photo, there are four or five floors above the basement, large but not as open; the upper floors are smaller and have no long views like this one as the line of sight is broken up by countless units of shelving.

This was where the original Blackwell’s bookshop was, but it has grown larger and larger over the years. The basement, shown in the photo, is known as The Norrington Room and has five kilometres of bookshelves in it, containing 200 000 books. Blackwell’s in Oxford also hosts a Caffè Nero on the first floor. The map (opens in a new tab, click to resize and drag it) is centred on the bookshop in the very heart of Oxford.

Some history

The current bookshop in Broad Street opened in 1879, though it was much smaller in those days, at a mere 4 m square. The first bookshelf unit is still in use, at the top of the stairs to the first floor. It soon grew larger, incorporating the cellar and the first floor as well as several adjacent shops. There was an earlier Blackwell’s bookshop, also in Oxford, that opened in 1846.

Blackwell’s had an online presence from 1995, selling books worldwide. It also opened retail outlets in many other cities and towns across the UK. As a company it remained independent until the business was bought in 2022 by Waterstones, another major British book retailer.

See also:

• Blackwells Bookshop – Website
• Blackwell’s – Wikipedia
• Caffè Nero – Website
• Caffè Nero – Wikipedia
• Discover Blackwell’s – Webpage
• Oxford map – OpenStreetMap
• Waterstones – Website

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