As Josie Long continues her review of London's charity shops, she delves deeper into Hackney Central, where she finds some old 45s, cheap DM boots and a LOT of copies of Rachel Moore's Prodigal Daughter...

Scope, 4 Morning Lane, Hackney, E9 6NA
This is a small shop, which is very high-streety in appearance and style. For future reference: a high street style charity shop is well organised and quite sparse, often with racks of new candles or greetings cards. Whereas the best kind of charity shop looks like the bit in labyrinth where the old lady shows up and goes “It’s all here! All for sale, have a look around!” and her shop is a kind of nightmare dirty version of Sarah’s real bedroom.

Nothing like that here, sadly, but the shop has good quality high street brands: Next/ Top Shop/ Sports clothes in good condition, unlike similar Scopes that I have seen full to the brim with Primark. There’s a good chance that you’d find something useful if not remarkable at this shop.

The most exciting thing here is a collection of boots from different teen subcultures, all in remarkable condition. There are buffalo trainers (those ravery ones with a thick wedge which have caused many a pilled-up idiot with plastic dreads to go to A&E) and New Rock knee-high boots (which I remember being the holy grail of rock footwear).

Star buy: A pair of 20-hole DM’s in good condition for £10. Great for if you want to relive the bit in This Is England at the start, before the racist one comes out of prison and ruins it for everyone.
Granny treasure: 2/5. Perhaps you’d find a piece of costume jewellery here if lucky.
Hipster steal potential: 3/5. it’s not in a great location and it’s very small.
Price: 2.5/5 not cheap but not silly.
Range: 2/5.

And but a few hundred yards away...

Sense, 307 Mare Street, Hackney, E8 1EJ
I was pretty impressed to find an elderly gentleman in here behind the till, listening to pirate drum and bass on the radio. Sadly when I asked him, he said “it’s usually Magic FM, but any time a big van comes past it goes onto this and I can’t change it back properly”. But I still think he was secretly enjoying it.

This shop is my local charity shop and I see this same man in here every time I go in, so it’s worth coming just to meet him. The shop is much like Sense round the corner. It’s a reliable high-street charity shop in terms of quality and reasonable prices but you’d have to look hard for exciting buys. There’s lots of M&S clothes, but a good look found a great looking burgundy ski-style old man’s jacket and – the highlight for me – lots of hand-knitted jumpers.

There’s also a much bigger selection of 45s than Sense, from Shakin' Steven’s Cry Just A Little Bit (see pic) to What It Ain't by Ghetto Enuff (probably from the shop assistant’s personal collection). Also I noticed this shop has a lot of comedy books for sale cheaply. I didn’t put them there but I do donate stuff to this shop regularly, so if you’re ever in why not try and guess what was mine? Clue: not the home enema kits.

Granny treasure: 2/5, not much old stuff.
Hipster steal potential: 4/5 – to be honest it’d be very rare to find something truly exciting here, it’s prime hipster territory and it’s v small.
Price: 3/5 fine.
Range: 2.5/5 Ok for a high street chainy store but nothing really exciting.

Here's me crying just a little bit with Shakin'

Then off over to Mare Street...

Salvation Army, 70 Mare Street, Hackney, E8 4RT
This shop is much more like it from the get go. As you go through the door you’re greeted by old looking glassware and a big pot of knitting needles. The window display always looks a little shabby and interesting and the inside has a proper garage quality to it. It looks full and jumbled, how a charity shop should look.

There isn’t that much stock, but what’s there is really diverse with golf clubs and rollerblades alongside promotional tamagotchis for the hit film Runaway Bride. Good buys on the day I went were CK khakis for £3, and a M&S Per Una suit for £5. For 20p I bought a diary that had a different radical anarchist/hard left historical fact for each day that had been made by the Slingshot Collective. I like to think it’s what they would have wanted.

This shop has some fun strangenesses to it, too. In the books section there are more than 20 copies of Rachel Moore’s Prodigal Daughter. So either it’s really recommended, or really rubbish. Plus there’s a café attached at the back of the store. It has the smell and feel of an institutional canteen, but in a reassuring and quite pleasant spotted-dick-with-custard-and-jam way, not a last-birthday-we-saw-uncle-Edward way.

Granny treasure: 4/5
Hipster steal potential: 3/5 It’s hipster territory as before, but it’s not as easy to access.
Price: 5, very cheap!
Range: 3, but a good three. A 3 that reads like a 4.

NB: As ever, any tips or comments to londonisthrifty@gmail.com