Westgate Bookshop

Geoff Almond runs this secondhand bookshop at 45 Westgate, Sleaford, which has held a five-star rating on AbeBooks, where Almond also lists stock, since 1997. Shelves run to several thousand titles across signed first editions, railway and transport history, military history, poetry and general fiction, with newer arrivals covering regional history and subjects as particular as lighthouses. The shop's back room, known to regulars as the Shed, holds paperbacks and other stock priced at a flat pound each, and is often reckoned the best part of a visit. Almond knows much of the stock by memory and will point customers toward titles rather than leave them to search unassisted. The shop keeps four opening days a week rather than trading daily, and the front room gives little away about the scale of stock kept behind it.