Reading Rooms

Our Reading Rooms are open every weekend! We look forward to welcoming you in!

Opening times:

Saturdays 10am to 5:30pm & Sundays 11am to 4pm.

Final orders from the café are taken 30 minutes before closing.

Our Reading Rooms are through the left door as you approach the bookshop, up the stairs on the first floor, first door. Passing through our Daphne du Maurier Exhibition (which is not to be rushed), you will step back in time into an old room with a ceiling of stars and beams, lined with green wooden shelves packed with vintage and antiquarian books - all of which are for sale.

We strive to keep this a calm haven in the middle of our busy city. It is a space for discovering old treasures, old books - fiction, non-fiction, and children’s.

Hopefully you will be tempted to purchase one (or more!) of our books, start or continue a collection, or even read them right then and there. We also trade tea, coffee, canned drinks, and brownies for £, available to eat in or take away. Please see the menu below. Once you’ve decided what has taken your fancy, head to the back of the Reading Rooms to order with our Reading Room Host.

Cafe

We serve a variety of teas and coffees, as well as vegan brownies from Cake or Death, a bakery originally from Hackney in East London that now operates from Exeter, Devon. Our coffee is sourced from Steampunk Coffee Roasters - “based in the beautiful Scottish seaside town of North Berwick, we roast fully traceable and ethically sourced single-origin coffees”.

Menu

Tea £3.10

Espresso £3.10

Coffee (Latte, Flat White, Cappuccino, Iced Coffee etc.) £3.60

Hot Chocolate £4.00

Babycino £2

Cake or Death Brownies (Vegan friendly) £4.00

Bottled water £1.00

Canned drinks £2.50

Syrups £0.25

Oat milk substitute - free