The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

Indie bookseller retires after 21 years trading

13.08.08 Graeme Neill

The owner of London Docklands based independent The Riverside Bookshop has retired after 21 years in the trade.

Sylvia Ridgewell said she is planning to spend her retirement carrying out charity work. “I am very sad to be leaving the book trade after over 20 very happy years, but now at the age of 68 I feel the time is right for me to do other things,” she said. “I was so emotional to leave. When we started, we built the business up from scratch without really knowing anything about the book trade.”

Ridgewell and her late husband Paul opened the bookshop in Counter Street in 1987. “In the first years it was very difficult, as every week the market place was diminishing,” she said.

The business has been taken over by a company called the Independent Retail Group although no changes will be made to the shop’s existing five staff.

Retail Graeme Neill Independents

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