Who knows where this is?
Clue: it’s a ground-floor commercial property at the core of Spurtleshire, with superabundant original shelving more usually stocked with products to clean, heal, de-pong, beautify, polish, and preserve.
That’s right: it’s the south-east corner of the Apple Pharmacy at 105 Broughton Street.
Staff here are establishing a small informal library (along the lines of the one on Scotland Street) where customers can lend, borrow, and exchange books in addition to all the other more mundane things they normally do at a chemist’s.
The idea is to encourage locals to come in, linger, and connect – things which not only have community benefits but can encourage better lines of communication between patients and healthcare professionals.
Books available so far include romantic and detective fiction, horror, action adventure, economics, politics, history, and poetry. Further donations are welcome.
In one guise or another, No. 105 has been at the heart of Broughton’s health for many years.
As discussed back in Issue 211, ‘John T. Coats & Co., Manufacturing & Retail Chemists’ first set up shop here in 1900, and a ghostly painted trace of their signage can still be discerned on the wall outside.
If you’re aware of other interesting developments in local shops and businesses across the barony, please let us know at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle