Ben Gosling finds out more about this hidden gem in the heart of Clerkenwell
Exmouth Market is one of the key arteries in Clerkenwell’s weekly exercise in which some 21,000 office workers and 13,000 residents exchange places through train stations and bus stops. The street is home to residents, bars, businesses; tourists, shoppers and clocked-off workers.
Miguel first discovered the kiosk when he was studying at City St George’s, having moved from Spain. Miguel frequented the kiosk when it sold juices, made by a former postal worker known as Jimmy Juice.
The kiosk fell vacant; Miguel saw an opportunity. He applied to take over the site, but time passed with no word from Islington Council on his application. A chance meeting with Jimmy Juice proved decisive in getting the Exmouth Cultural Kiosk off the ground.
“I came back to the area, and I realised when walking past that Jimmy’s kiosk had been shut for a while, so I started thinking, ‘Oh,it would be cool to be back in this area and do something with the kiosk,” explains Miguel.
“I applied to the council and wasn’t getting any updates, and then I bumped into Jimmy- who I hadn’t seen in years- outside the Co-op on the day I was going to follow up with the council. He said ‘you need to pester- you need to go to the council, you have to ring them up…’ “
“I knew there had been a book market there, so it became part of my pitch: ‘Why don’t we bring something like this back to the area?’ There was a book market from the late 1880s until the 1990s. So for over 100 years, there was a bookmarket in Clerkenwell”.
Miguel’s kiosk, in a fetching purple, also sports pictures from 1966, showing the erstwhile bookstalls on Turnmill Street- a far cry from the street which is now largely home (twice a day at any rate) to commuters and smart design studios.
Jimmy’s advice to pester proved fruitful.The busy council worker responsible for licensing Islington’s market stalls liked his proposals, and within a month the project was underway.
It’s gone from strength to strength in the years since. He sources his books (which are mostly sold for £4 and a £1 donation to Great Ormond Street Hospital) from second hand booksellers, private sellers, and wholesalers. He’s got an eye for the quirky and more esoteric editions; Julian Clary and Helena Bonham Carter stare up out of a cover of E M Forster’s A Room with a View that bucks the trend of characterless editions released alongside film adaptations.
On the kiosk’s instagram account (@exmouth.cultural.kiosk), Miguel often posts particularly interesting covers: a smart, minimalist Martin Chuzzlewit; a more abstract illustrated life of Groucho Marx and A Guide to London’s Classic Cafes demonstrate the variety of the books that cross the kiosk’s counter.
Miguel has found himself reading more since he opened the kiosk. Don Quixote is a particular favourite, while he also enjoyed Bugalkov’s The Master and Margarita. It’s not just second hand books, either. The Exmouth Cultural Kiosk, among other various small books and short stories, has published the Clerkenwell Pub Guide, a charmingly constructed guide to the area’s numerous pubs.
It was a project born partly out of an affection for an area, and Miguel has a keen eye for how Clerkenwell has changed, and is changing. He notes that it’s a markedly different crowd on the weekends compared to the weekdays, when office workers dominate. However, the high numbers of people who work here means that “you’re getting a lot of people making a connection to the area without living here,” Miguel says. At any rate, without that sort of connection, the kiosk at the top of Exmouth Market might still be standing empty.
