Oxfam Magdalen Street

Oxfam Magdalen Street Our store on Magdalen Street is one of the biggest Oxfam shops in the country. Come treasure hunting! Oxfam Magdalen St is one of the biggest in the country.

We sell fashion, homewares, collectables, ethical gifts, Fair Trade tea & coffee, toys, linen -- and everything else! We are full of treasures -- come treasure-hunting!

We love having the chance to do things like this!Today, we received not one or two, but THREE dolls’ houses. In fact, it...
12/06/2026

We love having the chance to do things like this!

Today, we received not one or two, but THREE dolls’ houses. In fact, it’s been a bumper day for donations: among the treasures dropped off at the back door were 10 large wooden vintage tea chests, 2 sewing machines, 16 terrifying but valuable antique dolls, several expensive football shirts and trainers, 2 fairly rare decks of tarot cards, a set of 8 TINY ceramic chickens (see if you can find them in the shop!) and a big collection of dolls’ house furniture, which we’ll price and sell separately as some of it is quite valuable.
Most of today’s hoard has yet to be checked, researched and priced, but we wanted to get the houses on the market as soon as possible!

All three are beautifully designed and decorated but they have had a lot of use: all have significant wear and tear and need a bit of fixing, which is reflected in the prices. However, there is tremendous potential for each house to gain a new lease of life and be loved by new generations. (Or older ones: house no. 3 in particular is more of a period collector’s item.)

Bring your junior property speculators along for a viewing! Home ownership starts here 💚

More colourful clothing!The sky may be grey, but you can brighten things up🌈🌈 patternpower
12/06/2026

More colourful clothing!

The sky may be grey, but you can brighten things up🌈🌈

patternpower

All This JazzWe really do have the best donors. Earlier this week a very generous audiophile brought us 57 new jazz reco...
06/06/2026

All This Jazz

We really do have the best donors. Earlier this week a very generous audiophile brought us 57 new jazz records. A mighty haul. A serious collection from someone with serious taste, and probably the finest record donation that's ever graced this shop.

But that's not why we're posting. It's not to show off the fascinating range of the music either, or how impossibly cool all those gorgeous covers have made our window look. It's not even to smugly brag that the whole lot comfortably tallies up to over £1000.

Nope. It's the generosity we want to highlight. The sheer big-hearted kindness of it. Because the obvious thing to do here would be to sell them yourself. We live in the age of the side hustle after all, where every halfway decent thing you own can be flipped for quick cash. There are apps for it, loads of them. Someone could have easily shifted this lot in an afternoon. Instead, they sat with fifty-seven beautiful records, did the maths, and decided our work mattered more than the money in their bank account. That a charity might do more with it than they would.

So if you're the donor and you're reading this - THANK YOU.

This is a lucky shop. 💚

Quick note: these items are live and selling from our window, so we can't guarantee anything featured here is still available.

VinylCommunity

Rupes! 🥇Our backroom volunteer Rupert was recently nominated for Oxfam's Volunteer of the Year award. In an extra lovely...
04/06/2026

Rupes! 🥇

Our backroom volunteer Rupert was recently nominated for Oxfam's Volunteer of the Year award. In an extra lovely touch, he was nominated by our much-missed Gillian, who is currently convalescing at home.

And even though Rupes didn't win (and yes, we will be demanding a recount) he's still a big winner in this shop.

So obviously we did the only logical thing and improvised up our own award. We had a dig through the donation pile and surfaced a trophy (of sorts): a Simplex Time Recorder Co. Ltd. Service Award from 1967 - it's a rather snazzy pewter tankard.

Ok, fine it's a fifty-eight-year-old award from a company that probably doesn't even exist anymore, handed out by a charity shop to a chap who didn't win the actual award. But come on! Just look at how happy he is about it.

Rupert, buzzing with his usual infectious energy and a fairly serious sugar high from one too many Mr Kipling cakes (see pic 2), graciously accepted and posed for these frankly brilliant photos to celebrate.

Once the E numbers had worn off, Rupes did what Rupes does. He deflected every compliment straight back onto his fellow volunteers, praised the whole team, and insisted the recognition belonged to everyone. The most generous acceptance speech in the history of awards that aren't really awards.

He's not wrong, either. Every volunteer in this shop, and in all the others around the country, deserves a trophy. We just happened to only have the one going spare 💚

Hark! Giant Classical CD Sale !We’ve currently got such a wide and varied ensemble of classical CDs that we’ve decided t...
04/06/2026

Hark! Giant Classical CD Sale !

We’ve currently got such a wide and varied ensemble of classical CDs that we’ve decided to make a performance of it and conduct a giant sale!

Whichever genre of classical music you like, you’ll find it here: we’ve got Early Music, Baroque, Classical and Romantic right through to dreamy French Impressionism, the tone poems and mood music of the 20th Century and some contemporary Neoclassical.
Also notable is the number of amazing British performers past and present: The Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, Dame Emma Kirkby, Paul Lewis, Steven Isserlis, Sarah Willis, Nigel Kennedy, Evelyn Glennie, Sir Simon Rattle, Jacqueline Du Pre, The Britten Sinfonia and Norwich Cathedral Choir, to name just a few 💚

Here at Magdalen Street, some of our personal summer favourites include Beethoven’s 6th ‘Pastoral’ Symphony, ‘Le Coucou’ by Daquin and Delius’s ‘Summer Night on the River’. Come and discover yours here!

Bedding! Last week we had so much of it that we decided to get it all out at once and have a giant sale!Of course, no so...
28/05/2026

Bedding! Last week we had so much of it that we decided to get it all out at once and have a giant sale!
Of course, no sooner had we put that plan into action than the temperature skyrocketed, the heatwave broke records and even with no bedding, the last few nights have been like sleeping in the sweaty fires of hell.
However, having got this lot all priced, hung and out in the shop, we’re not taking it back upstairs again even if the ridiculous weather persists - so here’s your guide to coping in summer using just bed linen:

-Soak a sheet/ duvet cover/ pillowcase in cold water and wrap yourself up in it
-Use surplus sheets or duvet covers as blackout curtains to sleep through the 4am sunrise
-Make a tent out of bed linen so children can play in the shade
-Make a tent out of bed linen so you can hide in the shade when it’s too hot to deal with other people
-Make a tent out of bed linen so people can hide from you when the searing heat and sleepless nights turn you into an angry perspiring monster
-Attach a pillowcase to your hat to stop the back of your neck getting burned (that’s actually a really good idea, do it)
-Put ice cubes in your pillowcase (that’s actually a terrible idea, don’t do it)
-If you go camping, put a duvet cover inside your sleeping bag to make a nice breathable cotton lining
-Turn sheets and duvets into a new wardrobe of loose-fitting clothing for when every garment you own is just too hot
-Forget about the actual duvet and just have a sheet or duvet cover, which you can then fold up and pop in the fridge during the day*

*This is not official advice and has just been made up by us to sell more bed linen. Oxfam cannot be liable for any consequences resulting from the use of refrigerated bedding materials or from following other tips

Bedding! We’ve got it, you need it ☀️

cheapfabrics

We owe an enormous thank you to .norwich for doing such an amazing job cleaning up the shop this evening!As you may have...
18/05/2026

We owe an enormous thank you to .norwich for doing such an amazing job cleaning up the shop this evening!

As you may have noticed, keeping the place shipshape and Bristol fashion is something we do struggle to keep on top of: we can’t tackle it properly when customers are in the shop, but everyone’s too busy or tired in the early mornings and evenings.

However, .norwich are the ideal people to help, a bunch of lovely kind souls who pitch in and crack on with tremendous willingness, energy and enthusiasm.
In just under an hour they’ve vacuumed the whole shop, peeled ALL the chewing gum and price stickers off the floor, dusted the bookshelves and even eradicated the smudges left over from months ago when an unattended child squeezed a bottle of black ready-mix paint everywhere and then rode through it on his tricycle.

Look at the tidiness! The expanse of spotless gleaming floors! The shiny metal shelves!
Massive thank you guys, it looks brilliant - we really appreciate it and if you can face doing it again we’d love to have you back 💚

This might be the most Terry Pratchett we’ve had all at once! 🧙‍♂️🧙‍♂️🧙‍♂️
16/05/2026

This might be the most Terry Pratchett we’ve had all at once! 🧙‍♂️🧙‍♂️🧙‍♂️

Read all about the world at Oxfam Magdalen Street - from Afghanistan to Lowestoft 💚
15/05/2026

Read all about the world at Oxfam Magdalen Street - from Afghanistan to Lowestoft 💚

While we’re featuring textiles, our linen volunteers got VERY excited about these yesterday!Behold (quote) “some of the ...
14/05/2026

While we’re featuring textiles, our linen volunteers got VERY excited about these yesterday!
Behold (quote) “some of the finest embroidery I’ve ever seen” - quite a statement from someone who has lifelong experience of working with fabrics.
Confession time: the muggins writing this post may have initially dismissed this as a heap of slightly marked, bog-standard white bedding. Well, that’s why we have expert volunteers and thank goodness we do, because closer inspection reveals an astonishing find.

They are three big square pillowcases made sometime between 1850 and 1900 for an aristocratic French baron. We know it was a baron because of the 9 pearls above the coronet.
Being white on white our photos don’t show it very well, but the embroidery is exquisite; these would have been crafted by a professional who did this for a living. Each one has a unique floral design but they are clearly a set; each one was painstakingly embroidered by hand using a single thread, in France over 100 years ago.

An embroidered sheet of this quality from the same time and place sold for £600; so far our research suggests a minimum price of about £100 per pillowcase. Yes, they’re THAT good.

If we knew our 19th Century French barons, we could possibly tell from the initials whose privileged head rested upon this finery, but we’re not so we’re going to do a bit more research before pricing them. If any 19th Century French linen experts have any ideas, or if any collectors are interested in acquiring them, please do get in touch 💚

Address

8-10 Magdalen Street
Norwich
NR31HU

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm
Sunday 11am - 3pm

Telephone

+441603665508

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Oxfam Magdalen Street posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category