Pre-loved palace has space to make big difference

Greta Simpson takes a look around the massive new Oxfam superstore

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WHAT a good day to have air conditioning.

As the sun climbed higher and began to beat down in earnest on the tarmac of the Manchester Fort Shopping Park in Cheetham Hill on Friday, customers stepping inside the ice cool oasis of the new Oxfam superstore let out sighs of relief at the respite from the heat.

But fifteen minutes before opening at 10am, as a queue starts to snake along past the JD next door, you get the feeling that people would turn up here rain, shine, or snow.

Because this isn't just any Oxfam - it's 10,000sq ft and the second ever of its kind in the UK.

The charity began life as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief in 1942. Since then, its shops have become a familiar sight on the British high street.

The superstore concept, however, is fairly new; there is only one other in the country, launched in Oxford in 2019.

The new Manchester branch, which has created 15 paid jobs and up to 150 volunteer roles, will sit on a busy shopping park rubbing shoulders with other retail mainstays like Boots and M&S.

As soon as you come through the doors it becomes immediately obvious that this is no ordinary charity shop.

Oxfam's usual hallmarks are there, yes: row upon row of clothes, dresses, shirts, scarves in a technicolour, multiprint jumble; shelves of trinkets, egg cups, toast racks, picture frames.

There are piles of CDs, crates of books and records and a formidable selection of fair-trade chocolate, handmade wooden bee houses and organic soap whose essential oils you can detect in the air several metres away.