Hold Fast Leeds: The floating Yorkshire bookshop located in a 1940s former coal barge boat wins national award

Avid readers, Chris and Victoria Bonner, have lived on the water for 22 years and in November 2022, they decided to open their own bookshop on a 1947 former coal barge boat called Marjorie R.

The bookshop is located on Leeds dock; they wanted to save the boat from disrepair and be at one with nature at the same time.

Hold Fast is already among six winners of the Booker Prize Indie Bookshop Spotlight award and has attracted a lot of attention from book and boat enthusiasts alike.

“She’s a 1947 coal barge and we wanted to do something to keep her going so she can stay in use. She’s an absolutely gorgeous space,” Ms Bonner said.

“Sometimes you want to go into a bookshop and spend hours browsing and looking at all the books to see what you are drawn to.

“But there are other times when you’re maybe a bit busy, or you’ve got a bit of decision fatigue, and you just want someone to hand your book and go ‘this is really good, read this’. 

“I think awards like this are quite useful in that way, they signpost people who perhaps haven't been reading much lately, or just feel a little bit like they want to change their usual reading.

“People chat in bookshops. It’s weird, you wouldn’t do that in Morrisons, would you? But in a bookshop people just randomly chat to each other. 

“I just love it because it's like the normal rules of society don't really apply in bookshops. It's okay to chat to strangers and people connect really well over books.”

The keen readers noticed a gap in the market for general independent bookshops in Leeds and decided to fill it.

“We’re both keen readers, always have been and Leeds felt a little bit lacking in that department,” Ms Bonner said.

“Apart from a really good LGBTQ+ bookshop and an art bookshop, there isn’t a general one apart from Waterstones.

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“Obviously we stock the Booker winners, we stock the big award winning books. It also gives us the chance to promote our local authors. 

“Awards like this help and help keep conversation about reading going; it's good for us and it's good for people who live nearby.”

There are many shocked reactions when people walk into the bookshop and is often compared to the TARDIS.

“A lot of people come downstairs and the first thing most people say is, oh gosh, it's lots bigger than I thought it would be or that it’s like a TARDIS,” Ms Bonner said.

“I think people are used to narrow boats, whereas ours is an old Yorkshire cold barge, it's a lot bigger.

“We’ve still got the old chipped steering wheel, but we've disconnected it because a lot of parents were terrified that their children would be able to drive the boat into the bridge, but they can't, it's [safe].

“We have plants upstairs as well, in the Wheel House, because it's a very sunny little spot up there. 

“Chris is quite a keen gardener, so we do sell plants as well. He's very good at giving plant advice and helping people find the right plants.”

Ms Bonner describes her go-to literary genres.

“At the moment I'm reading Claire Keegan, because everyone else wants to go see the film, and I'm trying to get it read before I go and see the film. 

“There’s a lot of really good Irish literature, I’m really enjoying that moment. We have all sorts in the shop. We have romance, crime, sci fi, classics, children’s, everything, really.”

Ms Bonner said that independent bookshops are “massively important” especially during the internet era.

“When you just buy everything online, the algorithm is very restrictive and it will only show you books that are either the same as or very similar to what you just read or just bought last time,” she said.

“When you come into a bookshop suddenly there’s like a whole world of books that you would have otherwise missed if you just shop online.

“We get people from all over, actually, which is really flattering. 

“We get people who've seen it on the Internet or heard about it from friends and they travel quite a long way sometimes.

“People come from Nottingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Scotland, Ireland. Some of them are book enthusiasts, some of them are boat enthusiasts, some of them end up being both, which is lovely.”

The boat has undergone various changes over the last 77 years.

“When this boat was launched in the 1940s, all the children would have had a day off school and come to see her and it was a bit of a celebration when a boat was completed and pushed into the canal,” Ms Bonner said.

“We like to think that that kind of spirit of being happy around this boat is carried on really.

“She was a coal barge and we've been so lucky because since we've been kind of getting a bit more attention, the family of the people that she was named after have been in touch.

“The family of the guy who used to be skipper for many years, who used to drive his boat between Thornhill Power Station and Wakefield Coal Mine, has been in touch. We have photos, both of them in the shop, which is lovely.

“She had a few years of being a houseboat, and then she was burned out for quite a while. We bought her from a boat scrap yard, she was just a metal shell, she had no windows, no insulation, nothing. 

“Chris has done it all up himself from scratch, mostly using reclaimed materials as well because we’re quite passionate about environmental issues. 

“He’s used a lot of reclaimed scaffold boards, made his own windows, he’s really good at [DIY].”

The opening hours of Hold Fast Bookshop based in Leeds is Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 9am to 5pm and Sundays until 4pm.