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Pickering Book Tree
Once Upon A
Pickering Book Tree
Market Place, long before Pickering Book Tree
Prologue
In the beginning, there was a building...
It was made of bricks, and cobwebs, and possibilities. Beautiful beams lined the rafters, and creaking floorboards spoke of magic.
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A long long time ago, all the way back in the second half of the 1700's when George III was on the throne and wigs and feathered hats were all the rage, the building was born as a terraced cottage in the heart of Pickering. As was the way back then, not everything was shiny new. The beams you'll find crossing the space and ceilings upstairs were given a second lease of life — originally they belonged to a ship and were dragged all the way across the moors from Whitby, an impressive feat in the time before lorries and cranes!
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In more recent years the building was transformed into a restaurant and clothes shop, then it sold wicker chairs, and finally wool, craft materials and antiques. The building has been very busy over the years; it has seen many faces and had many pairs of shoes pass through. Though the little building missed the families who lived there before, it was happy.
But over time the building got older and creakier. It needed a holiday, a break from its busy life of being a shop, and a bit of a pamper to get it feeling back to its full self. Slowly the building was emptied of goods and people and things. It had some time to breathe, to rest, to think. And after a few months it was ready. Ready to be a shop again. Ready for a lick of paint.
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And so the little building's next journey began.
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Soon it will be... Pickering Book Tree, our quirky little bookshop.
Chapter One
....... Image 1 of 4 (hover over image for arrows). The downstairs as a blank canvas. It took a lot of work to get to this point, and now the transformation could begin!
....... Image 2 of 4 (hover over image for arrows). The upstairs shortly before we started work on the building.
....... Image 4 of 4 (hover over image for arrows). The upstairs as a blank canvas and ready to paint (colour chosen)!
....... Image 1 of 4 (hover over image for arrows). The downstairs as a blank canvas. It took a lot of work to get to this point, and now the transformation could begin!
Bookshop Coming Soon!
The lease of the little building's time as a wool and fabric shop came to an end, but what now? And where did the spark of the idea first appear?
The family who took on the lease grew it slowly. It came from a determination, from a passion for books and nature, and from the dreams of a girl who so strongly believed that Pickering needed an independent bookshop — a place to discover new books, a place to settle into a cosy chair to sample them, a place of warmth and friendship. Her family wholeheartedly agreed, they loved books and the planet as much as she. The seed of Pickering Book Tree was planted, and over time dreams were woven into plans. But they were yet to find a home for all of the books they would need.
And so when news of the upcoming lease reached the family, they jumped at the chance. It was just what they sought, the perfect place for a bookshop, with rooms full of corners and nooks and spaces for books.
Drawings were drawn, mind-maps mapped, and a floorplan with bookshelves and categories conjured with a tape-measure. Plans slowly began to look more like reality.
At last it was time for work to begin. The building had never been a bookshop before, and was a long way off from being a cosy little bookish community.
Coming Up Next
More progress on the shop to follow soon... watch this space.
The building work is almost finished, and then we will move on to the exciting bits — building bookshelves, filling the shop with books, then on to opening and our launch party!