Scarthin Books occupies a former family home on the Promenade overlooking Cromford's millpond, opened by David Mitchell and his wife Pat on 30 August 1974. What began as a ground-floor sideline alongside the family's living quarters has grown, room by room, into roughly 100,000 new, secondhand and antiquarian titles spread across twelve rooms and three floors, including an art and photography room said to be among the largest outside London. Mitchell, now semi-retired, still lives behind the shop, while David Booker manages day-to-day trading. A vegetarian cafe serves indoor and outdoor seating with hot food at lunchtime, and a shop cat named Beano is a fixture. The bookshop has traded continuously as an independent business for over five decades, combining new and secondhand stock under one roof rather than specialising in either. It remains single-site and privately run by the Mitchell family, with no branches elsewhere.
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