Used Bookstore Near Me in Chalk Farm: Walden Books' Wisteria-Hung Front Room

Walden Books opens only four days a week, Thursday to Sunday from 10:30am to 6:30pm, and has done business from the same Victorian terrace at 38 Harmood Street, London NW1 8DP, since August 1979. The street runs off Chalk Farm Road, and the shop keeps more than 10,000 titles on its shelves, with paperback bargain bins out on the forecourt. If you typed used bookstore near me anywhere between Camden Town and Kentish Town, this is the old-school one, with literature and the visual arts as its strongest suits.

Harmood Street is a residential road, and the shop looks like what it is: the front room and garden of another house on the terrace. Kentishtowner once described it as two minutes' walk from Kentish Town West, the London Overground station on the Mildmay line along Prince of Wales Road. Chalk Farm, on the Edgware branch of the Northern line, is the other close Tube stop, and Camden Town is a longer walk south.

The easiest landmark is Chalk Farm Road itself. Walk up from Camden Market and turn onto Harmood Street, and the shop sits among private houses rather than shopfronts. Time Out's original write-up described bookstands beneath a big green awning that almost hide the shop behind them, and urged readers to explore inside as well as out. Founder David Tobin calls the result a seemingly secret location that thrills passers-by who stumble upon it.

David Tobin started out selling books at Hampstead Community Market in 1977, then opened his own shop at 38 Harmood Street in August 1979. He had no name for it until a friend suggested Walden Books, because they both liked Henry David Thoreau, who argued against dedicating your life to work. Tobin told the Camden New Journal the early years were hand to mouth, and that he ploughed everything back into buying more stock.

Tobin swims at the Men's Pond on Hampstead Heath and has travelled to Walden Pond in Massachusetts, where he swam the mile length of the water. He calls Walden a favourite book with the message that there are more important things in life than working. At the shop's 40th anniversary in 2019 he said the trade looked bright, and that for less than the price of a cup of coffee you can buy beautiful objects full of knowledge.

He remains the proprietor, listed on AbeBooks and in the Independent Online Booksellers Association directory, and the shop belongs to the PBFA, the Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association, whose dealers exhibit at book fairs around the country. Walden Books has sold online through its own website and AbeBooks since 2000. Tobin says the online sales help, but the shop has no intention of closing to walk-in customers and prefers to deal face to face.

The shop is two ground-floor rooms with books shelved by category. The PBFA listing names the emphasis as literature and criticism, history of art, architecture, photography, philosophy, psychology and good quality paperbacks, while other profiles add poetry, plays, history and travel. Time Out says the creaking shelves are always worth browsing for out-of-print oddities, and serious collectors should head for a glass case full of rarities.

Only part of the stock is online. The AbeBooks storefront lists 4,856 items, including 397 signed books and 245 first editions, against more than 10,000 titles in the shop. Recent online additions include Painting Norway, on the artist Nikolai Astrup, and The A to Z of Elizabethan London, and the IOBA page has featured a Verve issue with a Matisse cover and a twelve-volume 1858 Comprehensive History of England.

Fiction readers do well here too. The blogger behind Stuck in a Book called Walden a real treasure trove of fairly cheap interwar novels, with quite a few Persephone editions on the shelves, and found a copy of E.M. Delafield's The Pelicans there that she clutched to herself in case anyone else grabbed it. That kind of mid-century middlebrow fiction sits alongside the heavier art monographs, so do not leave the fiction shelves for last.

Outside, the forecourt bargain bins hold cheap and cheerful paperbacks, and Time Out tells bargain hunters to start there. Every profile of the shop mentions the wisteria vine over the door, and Time Out rates Walden as one of London's most beautiful bookshops when it blooms in spring. On Google the shop rates 4.8 from more than 200 reviews, which keep returning to the knowledgeable staff and the wide range of art, photography and vintage classics.

The browsers are a mixed crowd. Tobin says younger readers now come for the design and print quality of old books, and ask about alternative ways of seeing things. Book bloggers and podcasters have used the shop for meet-ups, and in July 2026 a London bookshop-crawl group put Walden third on a seven-shop walk from Camden Town to Tufnell Park. Tobin also counts book-seekers from all over the world who already know the address.

The one honest warning: do not make a special trip on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. The shop is closed those days, although Tobin notes the phone and computer are staffed daily, so a question about a particular title can still reach him. With only four opening days, give yourself at least an hour to work through both rooms, the glass case and the forecourt bins before the 6:30pm close.

If you arrive on a closed day, or want a second stop, walk on to Oxfam Books and Music on Kentish Town Road, a secondhand charity shop that Google lists as open on Mondays from 9:30am. Kentishtowner rates it, and the Amnesty International bookshop further up the same road, as brilliant places for a leisurely rummage. Primrose Hill Books, on Regent's Park Road, mixes new and used stock and hosts author readings.

Walden Books also buys. The shop's own website describes a large general stock bought and sold, and its profiles say it deals in used and rare books, especially literature and the visual arts. Given the specialities, a box of art monographs, poetry, philosophy or good literary paperbacks is the kind of collection that matches the shelves.

Two short detours sit between Harmood Street and the stations. The Roundhouse on Chalk Farm Road is a Grade II* listed former railway engine shed, built in 1846 and 1847 by the London and North Western Railway to hold a turntable, and now a performing arts and concert venue. Its curved brick walls are a natural first stop for anyone walking up from Chalk Farm station.

Heading south, Chalk Farm Road leads to Camden Market and the Stables, which Tobin remembers drawing locals, tourists and dealers every week when he opened in 1979. The stalls are busier and louder than Harmood Street, which is why the shop feels like a retreat. A sensible loop is Chalk Farm station, the Roundhouse, Walden Books, then down to the market, finishing at Camden Town for the Northern line.

Walden Books, 38 Harmood Street (off Chalk Farm Road), London NW1 8DP. Open Thursday to Sunday 10:30am to 6:30pm, closed Monday to Wednesday. Nearest stations are Kentish Town West on the London Overground and Chalk Farm on the Northern line. Second-hand, rare and signed books, with more than 10,000 titles in the shop. The shop publishes no price list, and online prices appear on its AbeBooks listings.