We are a secondhand and antiquarian bookshop on the main street in Topsham, near Exeter. Three floors, five rooms, about thirty thousand books on the shelves and a further thousand or so listed through our AbeBooks shop. The townhouse itself is dated 1693 by the engraving above the side door to Trees Court. Lily Neal has run the bookshop here since November 2011, with Vanessa and Lester on the counter and the search service.
The shop is in a 1693 townhouse and the stock is arranged room by room rather than category by category. Devon topography greets you at the door. Shakespeare and Ordnance Survey maps live on the first-floor back. The basement is hardback only, because there are no windows there. And there is a small room behind the counter we keep shut, where we house the vintage Penguins and the foreign languages, but ask and we will open it.
Devon, the West Country and British topography. Railways and other land transport. Maritime and aviation. Children's books. Gardening. Photography. The hallway between the front and back rooms holds the Folio Society shelves.
British history including social history, international history, military history. Theatre. Rural and country topics. Art history. Biography. Poetry. Architecture. World travel.
Philosophy and religion. Cookery. Sports and games. Cinema history and biography. Anthropology. Textiles and crafts. Classical studies. Hardback fiction. Language and linguistics. Dictionaries and reference. Hardback only, because the basement has no windows and paperback covers fade.
Crime fiction. General fiction. Poetry. Collectable children's annuals. Penguin fiction including Penguin Classics and Penguin World Classics. The landing carries art history, West Country history and topography, and Christian theology.
General non-fiction. Travel. Humour. Literary criticism. Philosophy and religion. Biography. History. Playscripts including a large Shakespeare section. Music including sheet music. Ordnance Survey and other maps. Natural history and pets. A long shelf of pamphlets on places in the West Country.
The premises at 27 Fore Street are dated 1693 by an engraving above the side door to Trees Court, alongside the initials W.E. Local records suggest William Edwards, who married Mary Hoppyn in 1678, or William Ewens, whose wife was Joan. Numbers 27 and 29 are jointly Grade II listed and were built around a massive shared chimney of Dutch clinker bricks. The staircases of the two houses are 17th-century dog-leg type with turned balusters. The attic fireplace upstairs has a very small grate, sized to burn sea coal.
In 1857 the building was owned by Sarah Goodrich, widow, and her son James Bridger Goodrich, painter. A pane of glass in the first-floor landing window is engraved with James Goodrich\'s name. Born in Topsham in 1825, he exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 1850s. The ground-floor room became Topsham\'s telephone exchange in 1924, with a specially strengthened floor to carry the equipment. The enormous telephone pole at the rear of the building still serves some BT customers by overhead line.
The first bookshop at this address opened in the mid-1990s and shared the premises with a music shop called Musisca, which is why a crumhorn still hangs over the counter, and why a dancing grasshopper is just visible under the paintwork of our smaller sign. The current incarnation of the shop as The Topsham Bookshop, with Hilary "Lily" Neal as owner, opened in November 2011.
Has been in the book trade since 1993 and took 27 Fore Street on as The Topsham Bookshop in November 2011. Bell-ringer at St Margaret's across the road, founder of the Topsham Chamber Music Society, volunteer at Topsham Museum, and the editor and publisher of Anne Merrick's young-adult novels Grenewyze and Beyond under her own imprint.
Covers the counter and the catalogue. Before the bookshop, edited the magazine for the University of Exeter Centre for Leadership Studies. Researches family trees in her spare time, which turns out to be useful when a customer turns up looking for a great-aunt's 1930s gardening notes.
Helps run the shop floor and the search service. Reads Nabokov, Updike and Wodehouse, in that order. Bell-rings at St Margaret's alongside Lily. Previously a parenting manager with the Catholic Children's Society.
The shop holds roughly thirty thousand books across the three floors. A working selection of about a thousand of those is listed through our AbeBooks shop, where we have been a member since October 2013. The online list leans toward signed copies and first editions, with a long tail of West Country topography, modern firsts and twentieth-century poetry.
If you are looking for something specific that is not on the AbeBooks list, phone the counter on 01392 877895 or email lily@topshambookshop.co.uk and we will check the shelves for you. We also run a search service for books we do not currently have in stock; tell us the title, author and edition if you know it, and we will come back when something matching turns up.
Topsham is a port town on the Exe estuary, three miles south-east of Exeter on the B3182. Fore Street is the main shopping street; we are almost opposite St Margaret\'s Church, with Country Cheeses as our neighbour and Mere Antiques at no. 13, further down toward the Strand. The Quay and the Goat Walk are a short walk from the door, as is the Bridge Inn at the other end of the village.
| Monday | 10:30 to 17:00, closed for lunch 13:00 to 14:00 |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | 10:30 to 17:00, closed for lunch 13:00 to 14:00 |
| Wednesday | 10:30 to 17:00, closed for lunch 13:00 to 14:00 |
| Thursday | 10:30 to 17:00, closed for lunch 13:00 to 14:00 |
| Friday | 10:30 to 17:00, closed for lunch 13:00 to 14:00 |
| Saturday | 10:30 to 17:00, closed for lunch 13:00 to 14:00 |
| Sunday | Closed |
We close for an hour between 13:00 and 14:00, six days a week. It is a small-town quirk we kept on purpose. Sunday the shop is closed; Lily is often across the road bell-ringing at St Margaret\'s.
Anything else, phone the counter on 01392 877895 or email lily@topshambookshop.co.uk.
Ground floor front, Devon and West Country topography, railways, maritime, children's, gardening and photography. Ground floor back, British and international history, theatre, biography, poetry, architecture and world travel. Basement, hardback only, philosophy and religion, cookery, classical studies, hardback fiction and reference. First floor front (Paperback Paradise), crime, general fiction, Penguin paperbacks and children's annuals. First floor back, non-fiction, Shakespeare and playscripts, music and sheet music, Ordnance Survey and West Country pamphlets. There is also a small room behind the counter we keep shut, where we house vintage Penguins, foreign languages, hardback science and engineering, horror, science fiction and fantasy, and bound copies of the Transactions of the Devonshire Association. Ask at the counter and we will open it.
Yes. Single volumes, boxes, or whole libraries. Phone 01392 877895 or email lily@topshambookshop.co.uk first with a rough idea of what you have, and we will tell you whether it is the kind of stock the shop takes before you carry it down Fore Street.
Yes. We run a search service for books we do not have on the shelves. Email lily@topshambookshop.co.uk with the title, author and edition if you know it, and we will come back when something matching turns up.
A working selection of around a thousand titles is listed through our AbeBooks shop, including signed copies and first editions. The full thirty thousand or so in the shop are not catalogued online. If you are looking for something specific, phone or email and we will check the shelves for you.
Topsham is small and on-street parking on Fore Street is short-stay. The closest longer-stay parking is the Holman Way car park, about five minutes' walk away. Most regulars walk down from the Holman Way side or in from the Strand.