Westwood Books

Opened at Easter 2006 by Mark and Evelyn Westwood, who had run a bookshop in Hay-on-Wye for more than twenty years before taking on a former cinema and village hall building on Long Lane. Nine months of renovation replaced the steel roller-shutter door with glazing and built the shelving that now holds more than 70,000 books across two floors, mostly secondhand with some new and antiquarian stock. A dedicated Collector's Book Room holds rarer titles, and the shop also sells Ordnance Survey maps, literary gifts and cards. The Guardian named it one of its top ten secondhand bookshops in 2009, and the writer Bill Bryson has described it in print. Paul and Heather Thomas, a local couple, took over the business in June 2020 and continue to run it under the same name. Sedbergh is designated England's Book Town, and Westwood Books is one of the anchor shops on the town's high street.