Phil Gillam: Another new chapter in bookshop's history

But somehow she got by - with a little help from her friends - and now Susan Caroline is chuffed to bits to be celebrating the tenth anniversary of Pengwern Books.

Shrewsbury has seen several bookshops come and go in recent years, and Pengwern Books has certainly moved around from premises to premises, but Susan has emerged as a great survivor.

And the loyalty of her customers has a lot to do with it - and perhaps also the simple fact that there is a body of people out there who just love the intimacy and friendship and cosiness offered by a small, independent bookshop.

"I suppose I'm a book person," says Susan. "The one thing we always had as a family was books - and plenty of them."

In a casual light-purple shirt, her glasses propped up on the top of her head, Susan thinks carefully before telling me of the trials and tribulations of the last 10 years. She is talking to me in the coffee shop section of her Fish Street bookshop as late morning sunshine illuminates the volumes on the shelves.

"The Christmas of 1995, a friend of mine who worked at the wonderful Powney's Bookshop here in Shrewsbury said they needed a book-keeper. So I went for that and did that for nine years. About seven years in, the boss (Hano Johansen) decided to sell the business. I made him an offer … which he easily refused.

"Anyway, one evening, having a lovely meal and one glass too many with my accountant, he suggested I could have my own place.

"Once the idea was sown, then it became a goal. And then I got excited about it."

So this, then, was the beginning of Pengwern Books.

But Hampshire-born Susan, 56, hasn't always been involved in the selling of books. She came to Shropshire in 1980 and back then she was a nurse. She got a job at the Eye Ear and Throat Hospital in Shrewsbury.

She became involved in a community programme, working with older people with mental health challenges.

"I then got a job which involved an opportunity to go to university to do an MSc in health education, and then went to work in the Social Services training department.

"Sometime after that I was quite ill and my then-partner said: This is crazy. It was time to slow down."

Then came the Powney's bookshop years and eventually that fateful 1995 meal and a few glasses of wine with the accountant.

"I started to look at what was possible," says Susan.

Apart from her years at Powney's Books, she had also worked for a year with Anna Dreda, owner of Wenlock Books at Much Wenlock. "So it wasn't as though I didn't know what I was doing," she says.

Interestingly, the Fish Street premises which are now home to Pengwern Books is where the shop began 10 years ago. "This was a favourite cafe for me in the eighties and nineties so I knew the building really, really well. And then one day I walked in here and thought: YES!"

Susan then borrowed "a lot of money" and, she says: "Started the hardest thing I have ever done in my life."

Very shortly after opening her shop, Susan was approached by someone with a business proposition and then went into a period of difficulties. "Things just got too hard," she says.

A new Pengwern Bookshop was opened in Princess Street running alongside the Fish Street premises. Then they closed the Fish Street shop. "The bank said it was the thing to do."

Then the business partner "faded into the background" and Susan could not see a way of keeping the shop going.

But then sanctuary was offered by a nearby church.

"St Alkmund's offered to keep the bookshop afloat so I moved into St Alkmund's in 2009 thanks to the wonderful Caroline Thewles. I met her when she was chair of the League of Friends at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Her business, Gateway Promotions, did a lot of literary talks and she became a staunch supporter and very good friend. She suggested I move the shop into the church. That was the winter of 2009-2010. It was colder inside than out. But it saved my business.

"Eventually, I needed more permanent accommodation and Kate Gittins, a thorough good egg and the site facilities manager at the market, directed me to the pitch at the market. I opened there in January 2010 and was there for four years and four months.

"And then this shop, the one where it all began, became available again, and I moved here just before Christmas last year."

It's been quite a journey.

But Pengwern Books is now a household name among Shropshire book lovers, and Susan is looking forward to a good Christmas.