Piece of York puzzle shop opens in courtyard off Grape Lane

Piece of York in Grape Lane close to York Minster, opened earlier this month and sells predominantly jigsaws and old school puzzles and games.

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Inside the shop (Image: Haydn Lewis) Owners Sam and Jan Robinson have been working hard behind the scenes to get their new courtyard gift shop open ahead of the Christmas.

The duo ran popular bar and grill 1331 for about 20 years.

Sam and Jan Robinson (Image: Haydn Lewis) The bar closed earlier this year with the building now divided between restaurant Fish and Forest downstairs and a planned new first floor restaurant called Pig and Potato which Sam and Jan will also run.

The shop has all kinds of old school games (Image: Haydn Lewis) Sam and Jan's son Stephen Andrews runs Fish & Forest. The 34-year-old chef founded his Michelin-listed restaurant as a pop-up concept in 2018, before opening in Spark in 2020 and then Micklegate the following year before opening in Grape Lane in August this year.

Jan said Piece of York has an alcohol licence and in the new year they plan open up the back room of the shop which you get to through a secret bookcase door.

The bookcase door will eventually lead to a livingroom style space beyond (Image: Haydn Lewis) "It will be in the style of a livingroom where people can come and play games and enjoy a carafe of wine or a coffee from Pig and Potato, once it's up and running," said Jan.

Also in the new year the shop will be selling donated jigsaws for suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably, or CALM, which runs a free, confidential and anonymous helpline as well as a web chat service, offering help, advice and information to anyone who is struggling or in crisis.

The shop is open on a Sunday in the run up to Christmas (Image: Haydn Lewis) In addition to opening Wednesday-Saturday from 12pm-5pm Jan said the shop will also be open for the next three Sundays from 12pm-4pm in the lead up to Christmas.