Whitby bookstore Holman’s celebrates 105th birthday

Holman’s, an independent bookshop in Whitby, celebrated its 105th birthday this month. The building itself dates back to 1768, the year local explorer Captain James Cook left the port aboard HMS Endeavour for his famous expedition to Australia and New Zealand. Current owner Angela O’Connor has written a book about its history.

Mrs O’Connor has been running the business since 2014, but it wasn’t until the 2020 lockdowns that she discovered the shop she had bought had such a fascinating past.

“I’m not a reader at all, my husband’s the one that enjoys reading in the family, so I started taking up the history books that we’ve got on the shelf and reading those to see if I could get any glimpse into Holman’s history,” she says.

“I didn’t realise the buildings were that old. So then when the lockdown allowed us to do more I went to the county records office in Northallerton.”

She found out that half of the shop had been purchased by Ernest and Ada Holman in November 1920, before the couple had bought the other half in 1925.

Angela and her husband Michael ran a post office and convenience store in Doncaster for 10 years before they decided to buy a new business.

“We were just looking anywhere within a two-hour drive of Doncaster. We found Holman’s and knew immediately when we stepped in the place it was a shop for us,” she says.

“People spoke fondly of it. I know they say the people make a place but I think the building has an atmosphere.”

In fact – in true Whitby fashion – the shop, which always has Bram Stoker’s Dracula in stock, even has its own poltergeist, says Mrs O’Connor.

“I always say it’s the ghost of Holman’s but things just fall off the shelf with no reason.”

The shop is on Skinner Street in the historic West Cliff, where many of the businesses have been in operation for decades and buildings date from the Georgian age, when Whitby was a bustling whaling and shipbuilding port.

“They started building the Resolution Hotel in 1762 and they got to the middle of the street by 1768,” says Mrs O’Connor.

“The far end of the street is a little bit younger. There’s a block that was not put up until 1900 but most of it was put up in the 1760s.”

She believes the store was originally a coaching inn.

“It was difficult to establish. There are books or things in articles written in the newspaper but the Whitby Gazette wasn’t established until 1854 – almost 100 years later,” she says.

“In about 1860 there was talk about taking away a mounting block for people to get in and out of the coaches and that seems to be in the middle of the street. So I think there’s the idea that we were the coaching house for the first 40 years.”

In the early 1800s the premises were occupied by Dr John Mewburn, who was a surgeon and curator of Whitby Museum.

In the 1870s Thomas Baker, a jet jewellery manufacturer, used the building as a home and business.

It was later a greengrocer, blacksmith’s shop, draper and haberdasher, and then a post office before becoming a newsagents in 1901. That was its last use before becoming a bookshop.

Holman’s has also had some unusually long-serving booksellers throughout its history. Lily Pybus began working there in 1913 and retired in 1958 after 45 years and Olive Poulter spent 30 years in the shop, from 1944 to 1974.

Most recently, Lynn Brunskill retired from Holman’s after 48 years – 10 more than the founder Ernest Holman himself.

Ms Brunskill worked under four sets of owners and helped Mrs O’Connor with her historical research.

“I contacted Lynne and she was able to put me in touch with all the previous owners or relatives and I started emailing her chapters for approval.

“Unfortunately she had to have an operation so she wasn’t able to proofread it or tell me if I’d gone wrong anywhere – but after its publication her only comment was that I’d made a spelling mistake!”

Mrs O’Connor was able to get in touch with Ada and Ernest’s grandsons, Kevan and John McCormack, who joined them for the centenary celebrations.

The shop has stocked many of the same products for the past 100 years – paper, envelopes, Parker pens – and buyers often remark on the nostalgia they feel on entering, but to survive in 2025 they have had to start trading online too.

It offered an eclectic range of services in the 20th Century; it acted as the box office for the Spa Pavilion theatre in the 1920s and 30s, had a subscription library between 1928 and 1960, and even did tennis racket restringing until the 1940s.

In the 1980s there was a renowned record department in the basement, which had once been Ernest Holman’s office.

More recently, staff have also taken part in Whitby’s first literature festival, which Mrs O’Connor says pushed up book sales.

Despite being its inaugural year, Whitby Lit Fest attracted names such as Miriam Margolyes, Lee Child, Yvette Fielding and Sir Alan Ayckbourn.

The store hosted events, including a book signing with CM Vassie, a local author who writes gothic fiction.

Despite changes in the bookselling world, 100 years on the independent store maintains its importance for readers and writers, says Mrs O’Connor.

“It’s their first stepping stone into a bigger world.”