The landlord of a York shop discovered his tenant had moved out overnight, taking all their stock with them.
The Grimoire Bookshop on High Petergate has been completely emptied out with thousands of books removed.
It happened overnight on Wednesday, said the owner of the building, Peter Docwra.
Mr Docwra says that the tenant had six months of rent arrears and had proved hard to contact recently: “She hasn’t paid her rent for this year, really.
“So we were in negotiations – I say in negotiations, she hasn’t responded to anything. And overnight, emptied it out and disappeared.”
Mr Docwra, who is managing director of Ashtons estate agents which operates next door to the former bookshop, bought the building because it was where he originally launched the business in 1998.
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it now. But it needs cleaning out and modernising.”
The Grade II listed building, which dates from the 1600s, has three floors of potential retail space.
These were filled until the last few days with Grimoire’s antiquarian and second-hand books, including one floor dedicated to sci-fi and fantasy.
The Grimoire Bookshop had been trading in the building for about seven years.
It still has an online presence on the Biblio website. We have tried to contact the bookshop owner but have not had a response.
Mr Docwra owns several Grade II listed properties in York, including 7 High Petergate.
“I’ll be honest, I’m fairly blasé about the rental because they’re not necessarily great money spinners,” he said.
“If you go and buy an industrial unit somewhere, you’ll get a lot better return from it than you will a Grade II listed building in the centre of York.
“You don’t buy these for the for the money. You buy these because they’re nice to own.”
He is now considering what to do with the suddenly empty property. “I haven’t decided. We’ve got quite a few businesses ourselves, we could put one of those in it.
“I might even look at turning it to residential to be honest. I’m a firm believer that residential should be moving back into the city centre.”