Yorkshire Shops Doing Good and Looking Great
Everyone knows the particular thrill of a charity shop rummage, but there’s a newer kind of shopping that’s been quietly making waves. Social enterprises and Community Interest Companies are popping up with a different kind of mission: reducing waste, making quality supplies genuinely affordable, and creating real jobs and training along the way.
In Leeds, there’s a brilliant trio that absolutely deserves your attention, and not just because they’re doing good in the world. These are genuinely some of the best shops in the city, full stop. The products are often far superior to anything you’d find on the high street, and the prices will make you wonder why you ever shopped anywhere else. They are stopping things from going into landfill, and they are also benefiting all of us.
Seagulls – Paint with purpose
Seagulls is doing something wonderfully simple and brilliant. They rescue paint headed for landfill, remix it, and sell it back at knock-down prices, or donate it to community projects that need a lick of colour. Their warehouse in Holbeck, just off Water Lane, is a proper Aladdin’s cave of tins.
You can pick up ready-mixed paint or ask them to create a custom colour for you, which frankly feels like a luxury service at a fraction of the usual cost. And it is not just emulsion either. They stock wood varnish, polish, shed stain, masonry paint, gloss, basically anything that comes in a tin. The people there are as lovely as the place itself. Prices start from £1 a litre.
129 Water Ln, Holbeck, Leeds LS11 9UD
Leeds Wood Recycling – Doing social good using your waste wood
Tucked away near Dunelm and Salford Van Hire, Leeds Wood Recycling can feel a little overwhelming on your first visit. It is not always immediately obvious what you should do with everything, and that is part of the fun. Over the years we have come away with half barrels, a sheet of thick gold veneer plywood (rumoured to have once been staging for either Beyoncé or McFly, which we choose to believe entirely), and more random bits and pieces than we can count.
That plywood, plus four legs also picked up there, became a genuinely stunning gold table for the grand total of £45. The barrels are now planters in the garden and look like we planned it that way all along. If you fancy learning to actually make something rather than just buying the materials, they run brilliant skills workshops too. It is also, without question, the best and most consistent place in Leeds to buy scaffolding boards.
Unit 6, 24 Croydon St, Holbeck, Leeds LS11 9RT
Scrap – Centre of Creative reuse
If you are a crafter or a creative of any description, Scrap will feel like someone built a shop specifically for you. It is a huge emporium of recycled materials for art and making and play, and the stock is constantly shifting so no two visits are the same. Being in Yorkshire and still within reach of a handful of working textile mills means the fabric selection is often genuinely excellent, with wonderful giant reels and bobbins turning up regularly.
There always seems to be an abundance of hessian coffee sacks too, if you know what to do with one. The key with Scrap is to go with an open mind. Think less about the specific item you want and more about the creative challenge you are trying to solve. It rewards curiosity.
The Spinning Mill, Paradise St, Farsley, Leeds LS28 5UJ – part of the brillant Sunny Bank Mills
What ties all three together
What is really striking about Seagulls, Leeds Wood Recycling and Scrap is how well run and genuinely enjoyable they are to visit. There is nothing apologetic or makeshift about any of them. They are warm, generous, buzzing places that make you feel welcome the moment you walk in. The kind of shops that remind you shopping can actually be a pleasure.
There must surely be more places like this across Yorkshire waiting to be discovered. Harrogate has Cone Exchange, and Sheffield surely has something equally impressive out there. If you know of one, the criteria are simple: well maintained, well stocked, and run with the same kind of energy these three have got.
One more worth adding to the list, though it sits in slightly different territory, is the Oxfam bookshop in Headingley. It holds a special place in Oxfam history as the very first dedicated second-hand bookshop the charity ever opened, and it remains an impressively well-stocked place to lose an afternoon. Given that Oxfam itself was founded in Oxford but the bookshop model started right here in Leeds, it feels entirely appropriate to claim it as a local treasure.
Yorkshire Shops Doing Good and Looking Great
