Exploring Bookshops | Waterstones, Gower Street, London 📍

Some days you just need to treat yourself after work, and so I wandered right past my tube stop and into the arms of a bookstore. The store I chose was Waterstoens, Gower Street firstly because it was within walking distance and secondly because I’d heard someone say it’s the largest store with a second hand section in London and so I HAD to go visit.

Waterstones Gower Street is Europe’s largest new and second hand bookshop and is located in the heart of Bloomsbury, nestled between UCL, Birkbeck and SOAS. With it’s enormous academic and specialist range, being home to an award-winning events programme, Dillon’s coffee shop and vinyl store, Gower Records, it’s the perfect place for students as well as all other readers to visit.

With plenty of nooks and crannies for studying and reading, a thriving events programme and five miles worth of new and second hand titles, Waterstones Gower Street is one of Europe’s most exciting bookshops.

Gower Street is currently under SOME rennovations and moving stock about, so if you do visit soon there’s some areas that are cordoned off, but I expect once done it will make the store even more amazing.

History

The Grade II listed building was designed by Charles Fitzroy Doll in 1908.

The first bookshop on the site was the original Dillon’s, opened by Una Dillon herself in a small area of the ground floor in 1956. This is represented by the still used Dillon’s cafe on site at Waterstones.

Floors

Basement

Within the basement, there’s the Gower Street Gallery which hosts a range of events throughout the year, as well as regular artist shows. There’s also the newly-opened Gower records – a vinyl-only record shop carrying both new and second-hand stock, covering a broad variety of genres from Taylor Swift to Classic Rock.

The basement also holds the Second Hand Department, which includes some new-ish stock but prides itself on recent rare acquistions and collections of antiques and first editions to pick up. There’s also a large and impressive stock for the Art & Design department as it folds right around where you can get your supplies from Ryman’s.

Downstairs there is also Biographies, Film, Music, Sport, Film & TV.

Ground Floor

The Ground Floor is home to extensive History, Politics and Travel departments, as well a huge range of original green-, blue- and orange- spine Penguin Paperbacks. This floor is also home to a well stocked collection from Independent publishers.

As mentioned before Dillons Cafe, serves Union coffee, a range of pastries and cakes from local bakeries, sandwiches and salads, as well as wine and beer if you’re after something a little stronger.

1st Floor

Head on up to the First Floor for the Children’s Department which contains a wide-range of well-loved childhood classics and the best new titles. This include a window-seat perfect for cosying up with a favourite storybook.

Walking through an archway fashioned entirely from books leads you into the Education Department, plus you’ll also find Fiction of every genre including Crime, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Manga. Do note that the children’s runs straight from kids, to YA and into the Sci-Fi/Fantasy section if you are looking for that specific genre.

2nd & 3rd Floor

The Second and Third Floors are dedicated Academic floors, and aim to stock a comprehensive range of titles across numerous disciplines, including:

Second Floor: Cookery, Health, Mind Body Spirit, Gardening, Nature, Travel, Transport, Popular Science, Learning English, Foreign Language, Linguistics, Reference, Literary Criticism, Business, Economics.

Third Floor: Medical, Computing, Social Sciences, Cultural and Media Studies, Gender Studies, Race and Studies, Psychology, Counselling, Teacher Education, Law, Religion, Philosophy, Politics, Education, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geography.