Blackwell's Bookshop

Broad Street, Oxford

A bookshop that goes on forever

Blackwell's has stood on Broad Street since 1879, opposite the Sheldonian and the Bodleian, and it is still the sort of shop that swallows an afternoon whole. Benjamin Henry Blackwell opened it as a single small room, and from the pavement it still looks deceptively modest; step inside and it keeps unfolding, floor after floor, until you find yourself standing at the top of a staircase looking down into the Norrington Room. There are around a quarter of a million books in the building, and it remains a family name that Oxford is rightly proud of.

The famous part is underground. Opened in 1966 and named after Sir Arthur Norrington of Trinity College, the Norrington Room is a single vast basement of more than ten thousand square feet, tunnelling out beneath Trinity's quad, and it held the Guinness record as the largest single room selling books anywhere in the world. Rows and rows of shelving fall away below you, and it is genuinely one of the loveliest spaces in the city, quiet and lamplit and endless. It is worth going in even if you have no intention of buying a thing, though you almost certainly will.

Four corners of it worth seeking out:

• The Norrington RoomThe record-breaking underground bookroom, more than ten thousand square feet of shelving beneath Trinity College. Go down the stairs and look out over it at least once.
• The antiquarian floorBlackwell's Rare Books, up on the second floor, deals in modern first editions, private-press and antiquarian volumes, fine bindings and early printing. Even browsing the locked cases is a small pleasure.
• Blackwell's MusicA separate Blackwell's music shop sits a few doors along at 23-25 Broad Street, with instruments and accessories upstairs and a deep collection of sheet music, Henle and Bärenreiter scores among it, below.
• Sci-fi, Manga & GamesWithin the main building is a much-loved sci-fi, manga and games section, stacked with graphic novels and manga alongside prints and Pokémon cards, and staff who plainly love the genre.

Getting there from the cottage

Oxford is around forty minutes from Well Cottage by car, and Broad Street sits right in the historic centre, so the park-and-ride is far and away the easiest approach; from there it is a short walk in past the Bodleian. Blackwell's pairs naturally with a wider day in the city, a coffee in the Covered Market, an hour at the Ashmolean, a wander round the colleges. Opening hours are on their website, and it is worth a glance before you set off, particularly on a Sunday.

“You go in for one paperback and surface an hour later from the Norrington Room with a small stack and no memory of the time passing. It is our favourite wet-afternoon shop in Oxford.”

Visit the official site →

Also nearby

• Bodleian Library · Library · opposite
• Objects of Use · Shopping · Oxford
• Oxford Covered Market · Market · Oxford
• Ashmolean Museum · Museum · Oxford
• Pitt Rivers Museum · Museum · Oxford