Opening Hours
We are open from Monday to Saturday between 9:30am and 5:00pm.
We do not usually close for lunch, but if you are travelling any distance and expect to arrive between 1:00 - 2:00 pm please ring beforehand (01780 766266) to make sure we shall be open.

Public Holidays
The public holidays in England are 1 January, Easter Monday, the first and last Mondays in May, the last Monday in August and 25 and 26 December. If the December and January holidays fall on a weekend the following Monday (and Tuesday if 26 December is a Sunday) are also holidays. We close for the Christmas and New Year holidays and usually on Bank Holiday Mondays; if in doubt please ring and ask.

Local Events
The Stamford Mid-Lent Fair is a traditional fun-fair with the rides set up in the streets around the town. Some roads are closed; the main route through the town remains open and traffic is not greatly impeded, although Saturday is very busy. The fair sets up on the fourth Sunday of Lent (Mothering Sunday), opens on the next day and runs all week. It is mysteriously and quietly dismantled and removed overnight on Saturday and the town wakes up on the fifth Sunday of Lent to find itself back to normal. None of this greatly affects access to our shop but it is not a good week to get the best impression of the town (unless you are a fun-fair enthusiast).

The Burghley Horse Trials take place at the beginning of September and run from Thursday to Sunday. Thursday and Friday do not cause much of a problem but it is as well to avoid Stamford on the Saturday as there are long traffic queues through the town and on the A1 until late morning, and again from about 4 or 5 o'clock.

Time Zones
If you want to telephone us from North America or Australasia this table will show what time to ring.
The times given here correspond to GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) - our winter time. Between late March and the end of October we use BST (British Summer Time), which is an hour earlier; most countries which have daylight saving change on the same dates as we do.

For those beyond these areas who need to find out what time it is in England there is a web site showing international time zones at http://www.worldtimezone.com This includes a useful list of daylight saving times: http://www.worldtimezone.com/daylight.htm Mostly the dates are no different from the United Kingdom.

Another interesting site for time freaks is the official USA time site http://www.time.gov which gives the time correct to about 5 or 10 seconds, all the USA time zones, a world map showing current day and night zones (like the one you get on aeroplanes) and other fascinating stuff. When using this site it is helpful to know that the UTC timezone (Coordinated Universal Time) is the same as what is known as GMT in Britain, ie the time on the Greenwich meridian, 0° - the basic British time. Greenwich (pronounced Grennitch), in south-east London, is the home of the Royal Observatory and Royal Naval College (splendid buildings by Wren); the international convention that the 0° line of longitude should run through the Royal Observatory was hatched between the British and the French some time in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, the trade-off being that French should be recognised as the official language of diplomacy.