Alice's Shop, Oxford

Oxford is full of surprises and quaint stores and one of the best is Alice’s Shop, which you will find on Saint Aldate’s. It’s the perfect place to find a present for adults and children alike.

150 years ago the shop was a grocer’s store that also sold sweets. Alice Liddell and her sisters often visited it. Alice inspired the main character in Lewis Carroll’s books: “Alice in Wonderland”, “Through the Looking Glass” and “What she Saw There”.

The shop appears in “Through the Looking Glass”, where it is run by a sheep. In the book it is full of wondrous objects that float away whenever Alice gets too close to them.

Today it is a famous gift shop where you can buy Alice-related souvenirs, such as lockets, charm bracelets, rings and earrings with tiny figurines of characters including the Cheshire Cat, the Herald and the Queen of Hearts.

Among the best selling items are the watches and clocks. Anyone would be delighted with the White Rabbit’s pocket watch in silver and chrome, or a wooden Mad Hatter clock, a ceramic-tile Humpty-Dumpty clock or even the very strange Queen of Hearts Backward Clock, which you have to look at in a mirror to get the time.

Other gift items include stationary, postcards, posters, t-towels, toys and delicate ornaments in stone resin or in hand-cast pewter and enamel. About the only thing the shop doesn’t sell is books, so if you want to introduce your children to Lewis Carroll’s delightful stories, you’ll have to go to the Museum of Oxford’s gift shop.