Snoopers Paradise

Snoopers is one of my absolute favourite places in the world. On my last trip I picked up a 1950s teacup for 50p… FIFTY PENCE!
I could spend hours here and you should visit next time you’re in town. There are rails and rails of vintage clothing to sift through — silk kimonos, velvet jackets, mustard dresses, leather shoes, and so many other key pieces that everyone should have in their wardrobe. As well as clothing you’ll find belts, sunglasses, hair slides, handbags, and all kinds of jewellery.
You’ll also find vintage holiday snaps, toy cars, top hats, cobra capped walking sticks, old games consoles, picture frames, and tea cups.
There’s a lot of junk that has obviously been here for years, but it adds to the charm of Snoopers.
I always end up falling in love with a piece of furniture and it pains me to leave it behind. Items have included side tables, luggage, sewing tables, footstools, armchairs, writing desks, and lamps.
Sometimes the staff are too busy chatting amongst themselves to engage when serving you, but that’s not the end of the world. Some might find this frustrating, I’ve become used to it.
Snoopers is an addiction and I challenge you to not fall in love (if you like all-​things-​vintage, of course).

Snoopers Paradise is another Brighton insitution, you absolutely must go there at least once.
It’s a large shop full of curios and bric a brac (and an awful lot of junk too if we are being honest)
I like going in there for a little nose around when I’m in the laines, however the price points of some of the items are just plain ridiculous, and you wouldn’t see these kind of prices for tat outside of Brighton. Brighton shops do seem to get away with labelling an item «vintage» and sticking an extra £20 on the price.
On my most recent visit I saw a SNES in pretty bad condition with no games on sale for £75. Absolute rip off! I know my retro games consoles well and there’s no justification in that price when you could get one on ebay for £25!
tl;dr — worth visiting to look at intesting old items, but basically a massive, expensive, glorified charity shop.

What isn’t there to love about spending a whole afternoon rooting through what is essentially a warehouse of tat? I always head here whenever I’m in Brighton, sometimes I’m looking for sometimes specific sometimes I just fancy a nose around, either way I feel like i’m at Hogwarts in the room of requirement!
This place is a real mixed bag and you can buy anything from old photographs, vintage clothes, broken dolls and even a taxidermy fox! (yes really) The prices vary from extrmely reasonable to ridiculously expensive so you have to be careful and of course not everything is truly vintage or antique but you are definitely sure to find something you like!
For me it was especially useful as I was looking for props for a wedding. i managed to pick up some really nice bits and pieces for a fraction of the cost in a normal shop so you just have to look.
Even if you aren’t in the market for anything in particular just come and have a wander through the aisles and you might find a treasure!

Definitely an iconic place to visit if you are in Brighton. I do love the corridors and rooms full of all sorts of antiques, from ridiculously expensive real stuff to the dirt cheap things you can get for a couple of quid. If you have the nerves to rummage through all the piles of stuff they have then you are bound to find something cool.

Snoopers Paradise is a must-​visit for anyone coming to Brighton. Cluttered and bizarre, the shop has absolutely no apparent order, with bits and bobs scattered and hidden throughout stretching rooms full to the brim of treasures and, well, crap!
There’s literally something here for everyone — old furniture, jewellery, boxes of tatty old photographs, vintage clothing. Whatever it is you’re looking for, Snooper’s Paradise is likely to have it in some form or another. It’s also likely to stock everything you’re not looking for, which is why I especially love taking a stroll around here.
First of all, let me state clearly — if you are not a browser, don’t even come inside here. You will hate it. If you get stressed out by sales or TK Maxx, then back away slowly from Snooper’s Paradise. It is, sadly, not for you.
However if, like me, you love a good hoke around — you’ll love this place! Many an afternoon can be spent wandering, trying on ridiculous hats, flicking through old books, pining after beautiful bits of furniture that you can’t afford and that wouldn’t fit in your flat anyway. It’s that sort of place — you can get lost in there for hours, caught up in the wonder of it all!
In terms of prices, this is obviously a very mixed bag. Some things are expensive, some things are a penny. Such is the way with big shops like this! That being said, there’s always a bargain to be found in here somewhere!
The staff are helpful and friendly! It always amazes me how they can find and price things in there without getting utterly frazzled by the sheer volume and randomness of the stock.
Get down there and have a good rummage — you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it!

Having been in the past, I wasn’t as thrilled by my most recent visit to Snooper’s Paradise. It’s a classic flea/​antique shop but seemed less well-​curated on our most recent stop. This is, I suppose, a luck of the draw as to what the vendors have found of late.
Great fun regardless of whether or not any treasures can be found. Always on the list when in Brighton!

Snoopers is another staple of this fair city, it being a fixture in the North Laines for yonks and embodies what Brighton used to be all about, shabby bohemian chic.
This place is great fun to have a ‘snoop’ about in, it’s large and is filled with knic-​knacks in every nook and cranny. They have pretty much everything, from vintage clothes, to furniture, to utter crap. My 4 yr old son and I had great fun trying out all the wigs in there today but they were a bit manky and priced at £15! This is my major gripe. It’s so bloody expensive! For example, there were some very dirty My Little Ponys that had been scribbled on and painted, for sale in there for £4 each! GET REAL.
Although, I saw 2 gorgeous little vintage baby dresses in there for £3 each. I think they were marked wrong but I was thrilled with my find and snatched them right up! I ain’t no fool sunshine. ;)
You can get some nice Brighton prints and calendars here if you were wondering we’re to purchase these…

A trip to Brighton is not complete without popping into Snoopers Paradise. I say «pop» in but I always spend longer in here than any other shop. Theres so much choice and a great place to buy presents. On a recent trip, i picked up some great vintage clothes at very reasonable prices, they seem to have more clothing stalls than they have for a few years. You can find anything here and they now have a super vintage photo booth!

Snoopers Paradise has been a stalwart feature of the North Laine for a long time. It’s very similar to an American flea market and is certainly the type of place that you could spend a good while in.
It’s a mish mash of stalls, clothes rails and cabinets full of pretty much anything and everything. You will find that the majority of the lots are themed and specialise in clothes, retro video games, old toys or general bric-​à-​brac. This is both a blessing and a curse and you certainly have to show some stamina to ‘snoop’ through a lot of the items on sale if you are looking for something specific. That being said, if you are just up for a random wander or have £10 burning a hole in your pocket, you can easy lose an hour or so exploring the maze of stalls.
Seeing that much of the space is dedicated to as much merchandise as possible, the paradise can quickly turn into purgatory on a busy weekend. I would certainly recommend making your trip on a weekday if you can. All the payments are dealt with at a centralised desk and your item will have a price tag that includes the stall number. This does make things more convenient, but it also would have been nice to engage in a little market style bartering with the individual stall holders. Since Brighton became officially ‘cool’ I’ve noticed that this has reflected on the price tags of shops like Snoopers. You can still find a bargain, but certainly some items would be found cheaper on EBay.
All in all, it’s a nice break from the bustle of traditional shopping and those with a good eye will still find the odd bargain nestled in amongst the tat.

What would the North Laine be without the eclectic Aladdin’s Cave that is Snooper’s Paradise? Okay, so half of the stuff is tittle tattle that leaps straight out of a Harold Pinter play with ludicrously ugly chairs you wouldn’t even see in an old people’s home, but look around and there’s brilliant finds here. Check out the retro telephones, the kitschy memory lane stall that sells concourse seventies figurines from Star Wars and Batman, Micronauts and Action Men. Upstairs there’s a photo gallery focusing on local elements as its theme. There arc lights, mushroom shaded lights, seventies chrome seats, porcelain dogs, wind up Spidermen… better stop am getting over excited.

Snooper’s Paradise gets a lot of press, most of it deservedly: yes, it is indeed Brighton’s biggest second-​hand shop, and stocks almost anything you can think of. It is easily Brighton’s best prop shop, as well as a great port of call for that one particular item, but that’s about it. For a place called Snooper’s Paradise, there’s so much junk that snooping is more tiring than fun. Maybe it’s called Snooper’s Paradise because snoopers can sell all of their tat here, and still get something for it!
On the plus side, buying nearly anything means that Snooper’s Paradise is a very good first-​place-​to-​look for nearly any item you simply must have. I do mean ‘item’ specifically here: objects you’ve always wanted will invariably be here in some capacity. This makes it the ideal place to start a props hunt for a night or event or theatre show, although I often then go elsewhere to get an item in better repair, and there’s the biggest problem Snooper’s Paradise has: in the end, most of this stuff is rubbish.
Not just any old rubbish, mind: it’s all the sort of tat that could be described as ‘somewhat useful’, or ‘in an OK state’, the sort of stuff you find being bounced around the backrooms of Ebay, losing value every time it gets sold on. Who wants any of this stuff? Shopaholics? In which case, you’re welcome to it; anyone with a brain can see that most of the stuff in here isn’t even worth the shelf it’s placed on.
Brightonians seem to love it here, and I just don’t get it. What’s so good about a shop that sells tat? We could all clean out our attics and open a shop like Snooper’s Paradise, which, behind all the tat, is basically in disrepair. No, no, not the mecca some people seem to think it is. Look out for them, they’re the ones wandering the aisles, a big grin pasted to their face, looking for that 50p pen topper from the 70s that will make them apoplectic with joy for all of 30 seconds, by which point they’ve left the shop and are halfway down the road… Whatever floats you boat.

On the rare occasions that I find myself with a couple of hours to spare, I lose myself in this cave of second-​hand wonders. This place should come with a warning for well-​practised ‘snoopers’ and charity-​shop trawlers like myself: Do not enter if you have somewhere to be within the next three hours.
This place truly it its namesake. Certainly, it looks like a great, big jumble sale but therein lies its beauty. In bookshelves and cabinets lie hundreds of little treasures from retro comics and figurines to gaudy costume jewellery; from vintage dresses to 60s furniture.
I have a secret obsession with clutter, and if I could fill my house with stuff from here I would in a heartbeat (I have a feeling my housemates would kick me out though). Some places just seem to attract the most interesting second hand stuff this is one of them. Prices vary quite a lot, but snoop for long enough and you’re sure to bag a bargain.

Paradise it is, and a snooper you must be.
A maze of quirky and kitsch, old and new, with hundreds of stalls stocking everything from cartoon figurines and old comics to antique furniture and ageing Doc Martens, records and photos to vintage clothes and jewellery, this place really does have it all.
A bit of a dark horse, the exterior is deceiving, once you enter through the entrance it’ll take you on a magical mystery tour of the weird and wonderful.
Looking for a violin without the strings? Or a 1950’s ceramic plate set? Maybe a handful of daguerreotypes and old black and white photos of nameless families? Look no further.
It goes on forever and is a labyrinth of zigzagging paths, cubby holes, stairs and slopes, so every experience in Snooper’s Paradise is different and you’ll always find a bit you didn’t know about.
I’d live here if I could.

I just can’t walk past this treasure trove without browsing for a while inside. There are surprises all around, from vintage clothing to classic LP’s and CD’s.
You can spend ages in here and not get bored. Its a shame the facinating building is in poor repair, however the experience is still worth it. Some items do appear pricey, so I made an offer.

Snoopers is a completely unique treasure trove to Brighton. Upon my first Brighton visit a number of years ago I remember this place quite vividly and it has since become an integral stop off on a non-​resident tour. With walls and cabinets adorned with old B-​movie toys, retro computer games, art deco furniture, antique musical instruments, vintage clothes and my personal favourite shoe boxes full of old black and white castoff photographs (which make good birthday cards). A truly wonderful place to waste and hour or so.

A wonderful and unique place that must be the definition of genuine ‘shabby chic’. It’s stalls provide an amazing mixture of the old and new, expensive and bargain basement.
70s homewares seem to be a particular speciality of one area of the place, with bright plastics and glass. Elsewhere, you’ll find old books, maps and records, dusty and often unsorted, so you have the joy of flicking through stacks of the things waiting for something to catch your eye. Clothes, some with that slightly musty authentic smell, such as well worn leather and denim. And of course, more esoteric collectors items, such as old nintendo games.

I love this place, I spend hours in here at the weekends! ‘Snooping’ through all the bric-​à-​brac you can find some great stuff.
I found a full outfit for a Sherlock Holmes themed evening costing about £40 in total.
The art gallery above is good too although some of the stuff on display is bit off and also some unsuitable for kids, just keep them down the end with giant prints of the palace pier!

Secondhand heaven or jumble sale junkyard?
Snooper’s Paradise is, in my opinion, a true Aladdin’s cave; an expansive shop home to all sorts of ‘stalls’, selling a fascinating array of secondhand junk, antiques and vintage treasures as well as brand new items too. It’s a really fun place to take visitors, as Snooper’s perfectly embodies the ram shackled, quirky essence of the North Lanes.
The prices are undeniably inflated. I resent paying £40 for a secondhand dress, but unfortunately this is what I’ve come to expect from Brighton’s irritatingly clued-​up vintage merchants. Although the prices can be a little steep, there are some beautiful dresses packed on to the rails at the back of the shop. There is also quite often a great selection of beveled mirrors dotted around– make sure to investigate every nook and cranny. It is also possible to find cheap and interesting china and bric-​à-​brac. However, be careful you don’t end up with something that looked great on the shelf, but upon leaving instantly morphs in to an item plucked from your Gran’s 70s crockery set. Trust me, this can easily happen!
Despite the pricey clothing, Snooper’s remains a firm favourite with me– I love nothing more than rummaging through the books and jewellery and despite six years of exploring the place, I still feel a massive pang of excitement every time I walk in!

Snoopers Paradise seems to bring out the inner bargain hunter in everyone that steps through the door. You walk in empty handed and somehow end up leaving half an hour later with a tin robot, a 1960s chair, an antique mirror or a pair of models legs!
Situated halfway down Brighton’s fantastic Kensington Gardens, its a sprawling, antique market that has dozens of different stalls offering everything from the brilliant to the bizarre. There are some cool furniture and homeware stalls, handy book and record stalls and a few inspired clothes stall selling great vintage clothes. There’s also a lot of very odd bric a brac that I imagine will still be there in 2020!

I can’t believe that I am the first to review this ! It’s one of the best shops in Brighton. Imagine a huge room full of antique/​junk/​retro stalls — and that’s Snoopers Paradise !
You really can get a whole range of weird and wonderful things in here and it’s a great place to go if you want to give someone an original present ! Items sold range from books to clothes to furniture to records to bric-​à-​brac to jewellery. ! The list could go on and on !
The staff and the customers are usually as varied as the items being sold. You pay at a central paying station — so credit cards are accepted !