Amnesty Bookshop Moves Three Doors Down King Street

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Accessible new home due to start of town hall redevelopment

Sonia, right, with colleague

Hammersmith’s Amnesty International secondhand bookshop has moved three doors down from its previous home to 175 King Street.

The move comes as work begins on the redevelopment and revitalising of the the western end of King Street, including a new cinema, new genuinely affordable homes and a revitalised civic campus.

It has meant the closure of Hammersmith Town Hall for the next three years and a new service centre being created in the bookshop's old home.

Its new wheelchair accessible home is the former Rosetta Stone independent bookshop which specialised in English and Arabic books until it closed earlier this year. For Amnesty the big plus is that the shop was already fitted-out with modern wall-to-wall adjustable shelving - ideal for its stock of 6,000+ books.

Though these premises are smaller, they include a children’s room, and a leisure and lifestyle section including sport, DIY, fashion, diet and exercise.

The crime fiction section includes true crime, but the popular ‘old and interesting’ area remains, with the famous glass cabinet for special oddities and rarities a wide range of vinyl LPs and CDs.

It all began in the 1980s when Amnesty International supporters Christine Pain and Dick Langton set up a table-top stall outside the entrance to the Hammersmith & City tube station, selling books to commuters and collecting signatures on petitions.

Now shop manager Sonia Laso say the shop's continuing success is due to its dedicated volunteers. "They’re our most important resource, " she says. "Without them, we’re nothing."

If you would like to get involved, find out more here.

September 13, 2019