Covent Garden Bookbinding Studio: £179 Weekend at City Lit

City Lit has taught Londoners since 1919, and its bookbinding department runs courses from complete beginner to fine binding. The college sits at 1-10 Keeley Street, Covent Garden, London WC2B 4BA, a five-minute walk from Covent Garden and Holborn stations. Its next short course is a two-day notebooks and folders weekend on 31 October and 1 November 2026, priced at £179, with senior and concession rates of £143 and £116.

City Lit opened its doors in 1919 as one of five literary institutes in London, alongside Plumstead and Woolwich, Marylebone, Dalston and Peckham. Its own history page lists the writers who taught or lectured there over the years, including T.S. Eliot, Dame Edith Sitwell, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers and Dylan Thomas. During the Blitz, classes carried on in air-raid shelters and on the platforms of Covent Garden and Holborn Tube stations.

The present home on Keeley Street was designed by the architects Allies and Morrison and opened in May 2005. The college marked its centenary in September 2019. Within the art and design programme, bookbinding sits under contemporary crafts, with classes running in the daytime, evening and at weekends.

The department describes its range as traditional and contemporary taught and workshop-based courses at every level from beginner to advanced. Students can learn traditional bookbinding, gold tooling, paper marbling, historic and experimental book structures and contemporary fine binding, plus conservation classes covering paper repair and the repair of cloth, leather and vellum books, as well as hand tooling and machine blocking.

Classes take place in a purpose-built studio that City Lit says is well equipped with presses, guillotines and hand tools. That equipment is the main reason to study here rather than at a kitchen table. Pressing a freshly glued case overnight, trimming a text block square on a guillotine or blocking a title with heat are all hard to do at home, and here they are part of the class.

Bookbinding classes are held at the main Keeley Street site. City Lit also has a second building, its Wellbeing Centre at 9 Kean Street, WC2B 4AY, which the college says is within five minutes' walk, so check the room listed on your enrolment email rather than following a general map pin. The main building also has a Student Centre and Library and a café called The Lunch Room for breaks between sessions.

Bookbinding: Notebooks and Folders, course code VD369, is the most approachable way in this autumn. It runs over two days, Saturday 31 October and Sunday 1 November 2026, from 10:30 am to 4:30 pm at Keeley Street. The full fee is £179, the senior fee is £143 and the concession fee is £116.

Across the weekend, students make single-sheet folded books, then a multi-section notebook with a pocket and an elastic closure, and finally a folded slipcase to keep it in. It is a practical set of projects. The single-sheet books teach folding and grain direction, the notebook teaches sewing several sections together, and the slipcase introduces measuring and constructing a simple enclosure around a finished book.

For people who want more than a weekend, the college runs multi-week courses. Beginners' Bookbinding I, code VD284, was listed for six Friday sessions from 18 September to 23 October 2026, from 10:30 am to 4:30 pm, taught by Alessia Tumbiolo, at £449 full fee, £359 senior and £292 concession. It covers folded books, pamphlet, zig-zag and long stitch bindings, a single-section hardcover and a multi-section sewn binding, with materials included.

Bookbinding: Japanese Books and Boxes, code VD416, taught by Kate Rochester, ran on four Thursdays in October 2026 for £349 and taught stab-stitched Japanese books and a four-sided folding case known as a chitsu. For experienced binders, the evening intermediate course with Gavin Moorhead covers leather work, leather paring and fine binding, with its second term starting on 11 January 2027 at £749 full fee, £599 senior and £487 concession.

If you have never bound a book, start with the weekend or with Beginners' Bookbinding I when it next runs, since both are designed for complete newcomers. Pick the Japanese books and boxes course if you prefer visible stitching and decorative papers, and want to learn how to make a protective case. The intermediate evening course is not for beginners, and the course page says so plainly.

Concession fees make a real difference here. On the weekend course, the concession rate is £63 less than the full fee, and seniors also pay less. The bookbinding listing showed 39 courses when last checked, including marbling weekends with Rachel Williamson at £179, so it is worth browsing the full category before you commit to one option.

City Lit lists Covent Garden and Holborn on the Piccadilly and Central lines as five minutes' walk away, and Leicester Square on the Northern line as ten minutes away. Walking south-west through Covent Garden takes you toward the bookshops that make this area a natural pairing with a binding class.

Cecil Court, the alley between Charing Cross Road and St Martin's Lane, has been known as the new Booksellers' Row since the 1930s and is home to around a dozen antiquarian and secondhand shops, among them Goldsboro Books at 23-27 Cecil Court. Foyles has its flagship at 107 Charing Cross Road, opened in 2014. Closer to the college, the London Transport Museum on Covent Garden Piazza is good for a rainy afternoon.

Address: City Lit, 1-10 Keeley Street, Covent Garden, London WC2B 4BA. During term time the building is open Monday to Friday 8 am to 10 pm, Saturday 9 am to 6 pm and Sunday 9 am to 5 pm. Enrolment by phone or in person at the Student Centre runs Monday to Friday, 10 am to 5:30 pm.

Prices listed here come from the official course pages: £179 for the Notebooks and Folders weekend, £449 for Beginners' Bookbinding I, £349 for Japanese Books and Boxes, and £749 for the intermediate evening course, each with lower senior and concession fees. Materials are included on the beginners' course.