| The Dartmoor Bookshop - then and now | |
In the beginning . . . |
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As some of you will know, the Dartmoor
Bookshop was started in Ashburton in 1972 by Eve Lowell, in the back of
the newsagents shop run by Eve and her husband Harold in North Street.
Over the next ten years, with the help of her son Mike (who shipped
books by the car full down from London), Eve built up the business as it
grew in both reputation and the number of rooms it occupied in the
building.
In 1983, they sold up the newsagents business and Harold retired. Eve bought the current Kingsbridge Lane premises and transferred the bookshop there, where she was joined in the business by Barbara, her daughter. In 1984 Eve retired, leaving Barbara to run the bookshop, and in 1985 Barbara was joined by Paul Heatley (in both the marriage and bookshop sense). Over the next 20 years, Barbara and Paul built it into a thriving bookshop with a large and very loyal set of customers who are not just based locally, but visit the shop from all over the country and overseas as well. |
After a while . . . |
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| In 2006, after many happy and successful years at the shop, Barbara and Paul looked to sell the shop on and retire. For a while, they couldn't find anybody in a position to take it on, and it looked like the shop might have to close. | |
Meanwhile, not very far away . . . |
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| We (Brenda Greysmith and Andy Collins) had
been running "The Pedlar's Pack", another secondhand and antiquarian
bookshop in nearby Totnes, since 2003. We had bought that bookshop as a
going concern and had been slowly building it up.
In 2005 we were faced with a massive and unrealistic rent increase from a new landlord, and found ourselves in an arbitration dispute which dragged on through 2006, when we heard that the Dartmoor Bookshop was for sale. To cut a long story short, in October 2006 we bought the Dartmoor Bookshop, lock stock and freehold barrel from Barbara and Paul, closed down the Pedlar's Pack in Totnes, and merged the stock into Ashburton. |
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And so, |
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| We have been the proud owners of the Dartmoor Bookshop since October 2006. We have kept the shop going along the same lines it has been successful with originally, i.e. low prices and constantly changing stock, but we now also sell over the internet, at the moment only via AbeBooks (www.abebooks.co.uk). This doesn't mean the prices have gone up as we use a dual price policy where necessary - if we think something is more valuable online it will be priced higher online, but the shop price will stay low. | |
And now? |
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| Recently, Ashburton's independent new bookshop, "The
Bookshelf" attracted a lot of local press exposure when it closed
in early 2008 following the owner's inability to attract a buyer for the
business on her retirement. We have had a few people coming in to us
saying that they'd heard we'd closed, but that's not the case. We're
still here, and we're open Tuesday to Saturday in the summer (July to
September) reverting back to Wednesday to Saturday for the rest of the year.
So if you thought the shop had closed - it hasn't! If you haven't been in for a while, you'll see a a different grey-bearded old bloke and a different cheery lady, and you will see computers in the shop now, but it's still essentially business as usual. Come and meet us, you'll be very welcome. |
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