Good quality stocking filler shop (Hawkin's Bazaar type) in Central London?

[FrannyonFire]

Please?

also mourning the loss of whatever it was called in covent garden

For whom are you looking? Is it just general bits?

markets (camden, spitalfields) are good for unusual stocking fillers imo.

I want little cheap well made interesting and fascinating toys for ds

Think I may have to stop at Chelmsford on the way back and actually go to Hawkin's

Why is there not one in C. London? It is stupid.

John Lewis (Oxford Street) have a 'pocket money' range of toys.

We have bought some good little bits and pieces there.

Have they Mercy? Oh thanks for that.

Franny, I agree.

But central London does not cater for children. The huge Gap shop has men's clothes on the ground floor, children's downstairs and women's upstairs for example.

You could also try Selfridge's or Hamley's, or even H A Rod's.

hamleys? But my god it is mad and mobbed.

I mean theres habitat and stuff...

Muji had great stocking fillers last year...there is one in...aargh, is it Whiteleys?

Now back in the day there was a marvellous stocking filler shop in covent garden

oh I mean obviously there is daisy and toms.

have you considered hampstead? Camden Town/Chalk Farm? Is that too far off central?

muji

also the science museum and the v&a have a lot of nice stuff...and the natural history museum shop is definately worth a look.

Couldn't you just order all your Hawkins bits? Or is it like with me; the fun of looking?! There's a shop in Muswell Hill that stocks alot of Hawkins stuff, but its very small, not worth travelling for!

now that you mention it, all the places I used to go to seem to have shut down.

The Tridias shop has closed down, there is only a branch in Richmond now (also Bath and Dartington, I see from the website).

I also used to go to Neal Street East and get loads of stuff, that has closed as well.

Some other ideas: Muji (especially for stationery, little folding toothbrushes, that sort of thing); any shop specialising in tricks and magic and practical jokes (there used to be one just near Russell Square);

will you be anywhere near a branch of The Natural World?
stocking fillers

list of stores

I spent too long writing that post!

also, I'm talking a couple of years ago, so might be all different now, but the small gift shop at the Old Operating Theatre Museum used to have some good stuff (like that soap that grows hair etc). Oo, or what about the Science Museum shop. i got dh (yes, dh, not any of the ds's!) some 3d drawing paper there for his stocking for £3! Makes all your pictures look 3d with the glasses.

Neal St East was lovely

thats it, neals st east

why why why?

What about that toy shop in the bottom bit of Covent garden, by that candle shop (if either of them are still there!)?

Oooh, I know exactly the place unless it's changed dramatically- Pollock's Toy Museum near Goodge St. Like a Victorian toy shop, loads of Hawkin type toys last time I was there (about 1000000 years ago).

oh duh of course, pollocks

you cant really go there with youngish kids, imo...actually no, franny your ds is about 3 1/2, yes? I reckon that would be fine.

I just meant the shop really, though- no reason not to go there with small kids is there?

um

yes

I tried to take a fiendishly mobile 10 mo and a 2 1/2 old there last summer

the experience was quite scarring

there's lots of small things to be pulled off shelves and destroyed

(oh ignore me though I have had a day of 2 kids running in opposite directions towards 2 equally busy roads)

I wouldn't go to Hamley's it doesn't have anything small and nice, just tons of brand name tacky things.

There is a lovely little place just off Tottenham Court Rd., Pollock's Toy Museum, it has a very small shop but with some gorgeous things in it.

What's Hawkins by the way?

islington has some good places: after noah on upper street is stuffed to the gills with the stuff

when I can be fecked I shall lope downstairs and get my time out guide to london for kids which has about 60 pages of this sort of thing.