Topping &Company Booksellers

Robert and Louise Topping opened their first bookshop in Ely, and it set the house style the family has since carried to Bath, St Andrews, Edinburgh and — in autumn 2025 — York, where the newest shop claims the title of the country's largest independent bookshop; the five-shop family firm is disclosed here in full, with Ely the founding text. The style in question: towering cases with ladders, tens of thousands of titles, free pots of coffee for browsers, and hours — half past eight to half past six, every single day — that shame most cathedrals, including the one over the road. A bookshop that opens like a bakery; Ely is lucky and appears to know it.