It’s not a sight you see every day: two of Hollywood’s biggest names mooching into Oxfam on the hunt for some fashion steals. But that’s what Laura Dern and Reese Witherspoon were up to on a recent trip to London, exemplifying what many of us who live here already know: charity shops, from Notting Hill to Northumberland, are one of the best parts of the British high street.
The stores, of which there are roughly 10,000 in the UK, first began to appear as we now know them in the late 19th century. They became widespread after the Second World War, when Oxfam opened one of its permanent stores in Oxford to sell donated clothing and goods to support relief work in Greece. Rapidly, popularity of the practice spread.
