Highgate charity shop showcases latest acquisition - a pillory used by Daniel Defoe

It would usually have been found outside a courthouse hundreds of years ago with a criminal locked inside.

But the Green Room charity shop in Archway Road - known for stocking wacky items such as Britt Ekland’s chamber pot and a dinosaur egg - now has a pillory for sale.

The device is similar to stocks, where a criminal would have their head and hands locked into a device and be on public display for passers-by to hurl rotten fruit and excrement at.

But instead of sitting or kneeling, the person locked inside remains standing up.

The pillory was found in Wales by a friend of shop owner, Noel Lynch, where it once stood outside a courthouse in Anglesey.

Mr Lynch said: “I wanted something which would stop people when they were walking past so they’d come into the shop. Quite a few people have stopped and had a go.

“It’s not really for sale, but if we were made a decent offer we’d consider it.”

The pillory was once thought to have been used on novelist Daniel Defoe before he went to prison for his political pamphleteering during the 18th century.