London through its charity shops #6: Fulham

On the North End Road with its vibrant fruit & veg markets, ethnic grocers and cheap household goods shops are a few charity shops. Cancer Research is cramped; The British Heart Foundation is pretty big with lots of cheap CDs, books and DVDs. A little further along is a spacious FARA, split over two floors; clothes are good, CDs and DVDs not. Lots of crappy records. The place feels a bit grubby.

On the Fulham Road, walking from Fulham Broadway towards Bishops Park, things go unsurprisingly upmarket. Except the Teddy Bear Children Support which looked like it had just opened – as it stood, it was rubbish, with stuff on the floor and very little order. It might be better now*. There’s a very nice MIND with cheap £1 CDs. Trinity Hospice was also very nice. FARA Kids we didn’t bother with. Geranium Shops for the Blind was likewise very nice, and clean, but pricey. FARA was good, promising, but didn’t quite deliver. Lots of pictures and frames.

There’s only one charity shop on the Fulham Palace Road, the catchily-titled Youth Development Summer Camp Project Charity Shop. It’s like a jumble sale (in a good way). Lots of records but impossible to get to them because of all the clutter (the pleasant American who worked there said he'd sort them out for me for the next time I was there).

Barngains of the Day: nowt, nada, nothing. That’s the way it goes some days.

UPDATE 5/9/11
A few minutes walk from Fulham Broadway tube a swanky YMCA charity shop has opened, at 611 Fulham Road. Spacious, clean and reasonably priced with helpful staff, it has a good range of clothes and bric-a-brac.

Walking up Fulham Road the opposite way, towards South Kensington, there’s a nice little Octavia, just opposite Cineworld. I’d never noticed it before. Further along still, is a pretty basic and temporary Relief Fund For Romania charity shop.

*It’s actually vanished.

UPDATE 2013
The YMCA has vanished. It was actually one of my favourite charity shops, purely because of two lucky purchases: Roxy Music’s The Thrill of it all 4CD box set (£2; pretty rare – always goes for over £30 on eBay) and Bob Marley and the Wailer’s’ Catch a Fire LP with the original zippo cover (this one can go for over £100 on eBay; I paid 93p.)

However, two new charity shops have popped up on the North End Road: an average Sue Ryder and a Shelter, which mainly has clothes and new stuff.