Overview

Getting into, and around, this shop as a wheelchair user is a nightmare - definitely somewhere to avoid. Zero stars.

Transport & Parking

Access

The wheelchair accessible entrance is a traditional wooden door on the right-hand side of the building. It is kept locked. There is a doorbell which you are supposed to press to get someone to come and open it for you. I pressed this doorbell numerous times over several minutes. Nobody came to open the door. I was trapped outside, ignored, unable to get inside. Eventually someone (not a member of staff) went inside from the street and opened the door himself for me. The door leads to a platform lift which takes you to the ground floor. When I remonstrated with the staff member nearest the platform lift about the doorbell being ignored, he was casual and dismissive about it. When I asked him why the door was kept locked, he gave me utterly fatuous and insulting answers such as "Because there's a lock on it" or "Because it was built that way." It is utterly ridiculous, and totally unacceptable, that the very door which is supposed to be an ACCESS route for wheelchair users is kept LOCKED!! Also totally unacceptable that the doorbell was totally ignored despite being pressed several times. This was not the end of the accessibility barriers I faced. To get to any other floor within the bookshop, you have to get staff to escort you in a goods lift, via narrow, crate-packed corridors. Every time you want to change floors, you have to hunt around for someone to escort you. This is demeaning and needlessly tedious and time-consuming and does NOT constitute an acceptable level of accessibility.

Toilets

I did not find any accessible toilets.

Staff

The first member of staff I spoke to (as mentioned above) was shirty and disagreeable. Other members of staff, who escorted me in the goods lift, were friendly enough but when I raised the question of the locked entrance door and the ignored doorbell, my comments were brushed aside with vague platitudes such as "Oh... I'll have a word with someone about that." I don't feel that they took the access barriers in the shop at all seriously. The one member of staff I sought help from, concerning a particular book, kept me waiting for a long while, despite the fact that I was clearly visible to him, because he was more interested in printing multiple large diagrams on a huge printer than in serving a customer.

Anything else you wish to tell us?

This was such a totally horrible experience that I well never attempt to shop here again. If you are a wheelchair user I would definitely avoid it like the plague.