Niche London bookshop in administration

Watkins Books, London's longest running esoteric bookshop, has entered administration with the loss of 11 jobs.

The bookshop, owned by Lord Salisbury, has ceased to trade since the administrator at Harris Lipman LLP was appointed.

The administrator, along with the landlord Gasgoyne Holdings, is seeking buyers for the business, which was set up in 1897 and moved to Cecil Court in 1901.

Trading at the shop had been more quiet than usual recently due to increased online book sales and the bad weather, it was reported. The business had also been appealing against a Capital Gains Tax bill of £500,000.

Tim Bryars, secretary of the Cecil Court Association said: "We hope a buyer will be found to keep the shop here...we think it could be bought as a viable going concern." He continued: "On the sentimental side, we feel Watkins is part of the history of the street."

Cecil Court is a Victorian thoroughfare linking Charing Cross Road and St Martin's Lane.

Watkins Books' neighbours in Cecil Court are various rare and antiquarian bookshops; the shop fronts have not been altered in over a century.

The bookshop specialises in new, second-hand and antiquarian titles in the Mind, Body, Spirit field, and was once frequented by Irish poet W.B. Yeats and G.R.S. Mead, author of various books on gnosticism.

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