If you’ve visited our HM showroom in St. Albans, you may well have called into or spotted Books On The Hill which is located at No. 1 Holywell Hill (a few doors up from us). Books On The Hill is an independent family-run bookshop that opened back in November 2019. Since then we have loved calling into this warm, inviting and insanely well stocked traditional bookshop. It is an oasis of calm, learning and curiosity.
“Independent booksellers – it’s not exaggerating to say that they are lantern bearers of civilisation.”
Sir Philip Pullman
The bookshop is split into two rooms: the first is the traditional Green Room, holding a curated selection of New Books and a very special Curiosity Cabinet. The second room (painted in Bookroom Red) holds the Antiquarian, Vintage, Penguin Classics, Children’s Vintage and Children’s New, Young Adult and a really wonderful Gifts section.
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The Curiosity Cabinet holds Rare Books, including First Editions and items of interest, connected to literature. Please see the Rare Books page for a list of authors currently in the collection.
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New Books includes fiction, history, politics, journalism, nature, travel, art & design, life & lifestyle, food & drink, graphic novels, short stories, essays, biographies, science & technology, poetry and local authors.
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Antiquarian Books range includes classics, poetry, religion and fiction.
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The Vintage Books are categorised in colour order, red, blue and green to maximise their appeal. Thankfully traditionalists soon forgive this creative approach and allow themselves to become lost within the shelves. Each section is organised in category.
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Vintage Penguin publications, this includes plays and essays.
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Children’s Vintage Books. This delights customers through the many different generations, rediscovering books from their own childhood and new readers discovering some fabulous timeless tales for the first time.
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Children’s New Books. The owners of Books on the Hill enjoy working with specific publishing houses as well as independents to bring some special often unique books, that produce captivating storytelling, who then work with marvellous illustrators, that promote developing imagination.
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Young adult – new titles, including a study section and classics.
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Gifts. To be given or to be kept for yourself, possibly for your reading corner. They also stock beautiful vintage inspired gift wrap, poetry cards, clothbound books, locally made candles, brass candle sticks, handmade vases, British made paperweights and much more.
During the pandemic, Books on the Hill opened their online shop which you can view here and is an amazing resource if you can’t visit in person. You can access a wonderful array of curated books that can be ordered and dispatched quickly across the UK. We used this service at HM during the pandemic, ordering books online and having them delivered to our HQ in Felsted, Essex. One of the things we love most (and it’s probably not a surprise given our design focus) are cook books and Books On The Hill always have the most interesting curated selection of books – take a look here for some inspiration.
Open Monday-Saturday 10am-5:30pm, and Sunday 11am-4pm, you can contact Books on the Hill here for more information.
Images: Books on the Hill
