As much as we love our shop, we often worry about a lack of space – it’s just two rooms in an old hotel. But every time we take a good look around, we always find a few more areas we can fit some shelving space. I think we’ve added over 24 more bays since we first thought we’d run out of space, including 12 more this week. And we still think we can fit more in! Of course we also make use of our front verandah, the hallway and back courtyard – it’s all put to work.

Our shop is perfectly situated in the gorgeous old town of Rylstone, about 40 minutes from Mudgee, about 75 minutes from Bathurst and Lithgow and about 3 hours from Sydney. Housed in the historic, Bridge View Inn, it’s hard to imagine a much better setting.

Our landlords are the Rylstone & District Historical Society. They purchased the lovely old sandstone building in the 1960’s and have since done a great job in restoring it to it’s former glory. Built as an Inn in the 1870’s, it’s been home to many businesses including a popular restaurant as well as the local bank – you can still see the cement slabs that were laid to hold the safes. It’s now home to 29Nine99, run by the lovely NaLan. This has become a super popular and famous Yum Cha House, featured on Better Homes & Gardens, Sydney Weekender and Andy and Ben Eat Australia. If you’re visiting us, you must have some yum cha! We also share with a barber, upstairs is a well appointed character 2 bedroom apartment (complete with open fire) for holiday rentals, and the Cottage Museum out the back run by the Historic Society. This link gives more history about the building – just ignore the reference at the end to the Thai massage being a tenant – that’s now us! A bit of a change!

The building has so much character, including the restored mural in the dining room (that Gemma and I both think looks a bit demonic for our tastes). Our shop has it’s own charm – our “back” room is also fondly called ‘The Snug’ and was originally the Ladies Bar. It seems to be happy in it’s current role displaying wool and also houses our lovely green leather Chesterfield lounge – if we have any spare time during the day, you can find Gemma and me sitting and knitting here. The Bridge View Inn was also one of the locations used in filming ‘The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith’. Local lore has it that the film crew brought in the overmantle mirror behind our countertop as a prop and left it there. You can see our countertop and the mirror in bar scenes in the movie.

Our shop counter has it’s own history having originally been part of the Cudgegong Post Office. Windermere Dam was built in the 70’s to provide a water supply for the area. In the making, the small town of Cudgegong was flooded and the lovely old counter was moved to our Inn.

Anyway, we’re very happy in our shop and in our town. We’d love you to drop by and spend the day (or weekend, or week) exploring our region. I’m sure neither our shop or area will disappoint. We may even have the fire on if it’s really cold!