Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland

The Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland charity shop in Portobello is certainly one of the larger shops in the high street. It is quite long and is full of stock. From the outside, the shop seems quite dated but when you wonder in a lot of their stock whether its clothes, books, children’s toys, or even CD’s are not that old.
The shop really does have a great range of items for a charity shop, and when I was in it was quite busy with young and old trying to find a bargain.
However, as already been mentioned in past reviews, this charity shop raises money for a very worthy cause. It is a charity which is not as well known as others, and certainly I had never really heard of it before. However, this shop seems to have a good flow of customers and recently people have started to turn to these kind of shops.
Most likely Portobello’s most impressive charity shop.

CHSS was a charity that I hadn’t heard of before, so after visiting this shop, I had a check on their website to see what was what. They do important work with those who have chest, heart and stroke illnesses; all of which are common today. Their shop in the Portobello area is one of a few different charity shops in the area. I agree with Marj; Portobello is not really full of good places to shop, and so these charity shops are doing a good job. Inside, it’s a fairly well sized place, with the normal selection of items made up from public donations. They were doing an offer of 2 CDs for £1, and there were definitely some great deals to be had in that department, if you can cope with the fact that someone else has already owned the CD.
There were a fair few people coming in and out when I visited, so clearly this place is well used by the community. Sometimes these smaller or less well known charities can be overshadowed by their larger counterparts, and it’s good to see that this charity is trying to raise its profile. Let’s hope that the community continue to use and support them.

Chest, Heart and Stroke is quite a stretched out charity shop, and one of the largest in the area. It’s also supporting a charity which arguably doesn’t advertise its cause in the same way that well known associations Shelter and Barnardos do, so it’s good that buying something out of here gives you a chance to support the cause.
Last time I visited they had generous donations of good quality clothing, not to mention a lot of intruiging old children’s board games. They seem to get a lot of children’s goods donated to them as they had a good kid’s selection.
Portobello isn’t well known for being the shopping epicentre of Edinburgh — there’s not actually a great deal of choice in this region. The local charity shops give locals a different option, and this charity shop seems to have enough clothing to keep the teens in neighbouring areas happy. Plus, it has to be said, it’s always an ethical choice when you buy items in a charity shop.