A Market Town That Rewards the Curious
There is a particular pleasure in arriving somewhere by train and immediately knowing you have come to the right place. Honiton does this. You step off the train — just twenty-three minutes from Exeter — and within a few hundred metres you are on one of the finest High Streets in Devon. Not the busiest. Not the flashiest. But one of the most interesting, because Honiton has spent centuries quietly building a reputation for two things: antiques and lace.
The town sits in the Otter Valley in the heart of East Devon, a market town since at least the thirteenth century and a centre for lacemaking since the seventeenth. Today it draws antique hunters from across the South West and beyond, its broad High Street lined with more antique shops, galleries, and dealers than you would expect in a town of eight thousand people. But Honiton is more than a shopping destination. It has proper pubs, a museum that punches well above its weight, an annual agricultural show that draws twenty thousand visitors, and some of the most beautiful countryside in Devon on its doorstep.
If you are looking for a day trip from Exeter that combines culture, history, good food, and the kind of gentle browsing that feels like a holiday, Honiton is hard to beat.
The High Street: East Devon's Antique Capital
Honiton's High Street is wide, handsome, and built for walking. It stretches for over half a mile and has the sort of varied, independent character that most English towns lost years ago. At its peak, more than twenty antique shops lined the street, and while the number has fluctuated over the years, Honiton remains the undisputed antique capital of the South West.
The Shops Worth Knowing
Pilgrim Antiques at number 45 has been here since 1972, founded by Graham and Jill Mills. It has grown into one of the largest and most discerning suppliers of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth-century English and French country furniture in the region. If you are after a proper farmhouse table or a set of Georgian dining chairs, this is where to start.
Merchant House Antiques at number 19 specialises in English and continental antique furniture — large dining tables, sets of chairs, wardrobes, kneehole desks, and bookcases. It is open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm, and the stock changes frequently enough that regular visits are rewarded.
Hermitage Antiques at number 37 is something slightly different: a gilding workshop that meets antique showroom. In retail since 2014, it sells mirrors, rugs, furniture, jewellery, studio pottery, and decorative items, with restoration and gilding services available on site. The combination of craft and commerce makes it one of the more distinctive shops on the street.
The Grove Antique Centre at number 55 is a multi-dealer centre where you can browse a wide range of stock from different sellers under one roof — useful if you prefer variety to specialism.
Fountain Antiques at number 132, towards the eastern end of the High Street, is a large and well-stocked centre with a friendly reputation and a diverse collection that ranges from small collectables to substantial pieces of furniture.
Honiton's antique shops tend to keep traditional hours — most are open Monday to Saturday, roughly 10am to 5pm. Saturday mornings are the busiest time. If you prefer a quieter browse, midweek is ideal. Several shops close on Sundays, so check before making a special trip.
Beyond Antiques
The High Street is not only about antiques. Independent shops, cafes, and galleries fill the spaces between the dealers, and the town has a thriving Saturday market. There is a genuine sense of a place that has not been hollowed out by chain stores — the kind of high street that people say no longer exists, but which Honiton has quietly preserved.
Honiton Lace: A Craft Fit for Royalty
Honiton's other great tradition is lacemaking, and it is a tradition with a genuinely remarkable history. The first written evidence of lace production in Honiton dates from 1617 — a brass plaque on the tomb of James Rodge, a local man whose family was involved in the trade. From there, Honiton lace grew into one of the most prestigious crafts in England.
The lace is made using a technique called bobbin lace, where individual motifs — flowers, leaves, butterflies — are worked separately on a pillow using fine thread and bone bobbins, then joined together to create the finished piece. The technique produces lace of extraordinary delicacy and beauty, and it attracted royal attention early on. Queen Victoria's wedding veil and the christening robe used for royal infants were both made from Honiton lace, cementing its reputation as a craft fit for the highest occasions.
At its height, the lace industry employed thousands of people across East Devon, many of them women and children working from home. The decline of handmade lace in the face of machine production hit the area hard, but the tradition has never entirely died. Today, Honiton lace is kept alive by a dedicated community of lacemakers, and the town's museum holds the largest collection of Honiton lace in the world.
Allhallows Museum of Lace and Local Antiquities
The museum that houses this collection is as interesting as its contents. Allhallows Museum occupies a former roadside chapel that existed before 1327, built to serve travellers passing through Honiton. From the sixteenth century the building was used by Allhallows School until 1938, when the school moved to Rousdon. The chapel was seriously damaged by fire in 1765, rebuilt, and after the Second World War was reopened as a local museum in 1946.
It is still run entirely by volunteers — a remarkable feat of community dedication that has continued for eighty years. Inside, you will find the world's largest collection of Honiton lace, tracing the history of lacemaking from the seventeenth century to the present day. But the museum does not stop at lace. Its galleries hold a fascinating collection of local antiquities, including black lace worn by the Victorians as a symbol of mourning and, somewhat unexpectedly, a scarlet nightdress that belonged to Wallis Simpson — the woman for whom King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in 1936.
Allhallows Museum is a volunteer-run charity and opening hours are seasonal. It is typically open from April to October, Monday to Saturday. Admission is free, though donations are welcomed and genuinely appreciated — this is not an institution with Arts Council funding behind it, but a community effort to preserve Honiton's heritage.
The museum sits on the High Street itself, making it easy to combine with an antique shop crawl. Give it at least forty-five minutes — there is more here than you expect.
Where to Eat and Drink
One of the best things about Honiton is that it has proper places to eat and drink, not just tearoom-and-pasty options. The food scene is strong, driven by the same locally sourced produce that makes Devon's food and drink heritage one of the county's great assets.
The Holt
The Holt, at 178 High Street, is the standout. A pub and restaurant that takes its food seriously without being remotely pretentious, it specialises in home-smoked dishes alongside a British menu with European influences. The bar serves a full range of Otter Brewery ales — appropriate, given the brewery is just down the road in Luppitt — and the upstairs restaurant offers a more formal dining experience. The Holt is the kind of place where you can have a quick pint and a bar snack or settle in for a proper three-course meal. Both options are excellent.
The Otter Inn
Just outside Honiton in the hamlet of Weston, the Otter Inn is a traditional Devon pub perched on the banks of the River Otter. Parts of the building date back to the 1700s, and it has the kind of sprawling beer garden that makes summer afternoons disappear. The restaurant runs carveries on Thursdays and Sundays, and the daily specials board features locally sourced produce. It is dog-friendly, family-friendly, and has a huge car park — which matters more than you might think in rural Devon.
Boston Tea Party
For daytime eating, the Boston Tea Party on the High Street offers sustainable breakfasts, burgers, salads, and baked goods. It is dog-friendly, has a lovely garden at the back, and is the sort of place where you can linger over a flat white and a brunch without anyone rushing you.
Sawatdee
If you fancy something different, Sawatdee serves authentic Thai food that has earned it a loyal local following. The dishes are delicious, subtly spiced, and reasonably priced — a welcome alternative to the pub-lunch default.
The Honiton Show
Every year on the first Thursday in August, Honiton hosts one of the largest one-day agricultural shows in England. The Honiton Agricultural Show has been running for over 130 years — the first show took place in 1890, during the reign of Queen Victoria, held on Bramble Hill with Viscount Sidmouth presiding.
Today it attracts more than twenty thousand visitors, over a thousand livestock entries, and in excess of four hundred trade exhibitors. It blends traditional and modern agriculture, showcasing local farming, produce, crafts, and rural skills. Part of the show includes the West of England Hound Show, the second largest in the country, attracting packs from across the British Isles.
If you are visiting Devon in early August, it is one of the best social events in the East Devon calendar — the kind of day where you bump into everyone and end up staying longer than planned. Which, in fairness, describes most good days in Devon.
The Otter Valley
Honiton sits at the head of the Otter Valley, and if you have time after the High Street and the museum, the surrounding countryside deserves exploring. The River Otter runs south from Honiton through a lush valley towards the coast at Budleigh Salterton, passing through some of Devon's most beautiful farmland along the way.
The Lower Otter Valley, managed as a nature reserve, offers a two-and-a-half-mile wildlife walk along the South West Coast Path through breathtakingly beautiful scenery. Over 120 species of bird have been recorded on the site, and the reserve is also home to dormice, bats, kingfishers, and — most famously — beavers, which have naturally recolonised the river in recent years after centuries of absence.
The valley consists of salt marsh, reed beds, low-lying meadows, and pastureland, with hides and viewing platforms along the river for wildlife spotting. It is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and is the perfect complement to a morning in Honiton — culture and heritage in the town, nature and landscape in the afternoon.
For more ideas on walking routes around Devon that work brilliantly for socialising, we have a separate guide.
Getting to Honiton from Exeter
This is the good part. Honiton is just twenty-three minutes from Exeter by direct train, with services operated by Great Western Railway and South Western Railway running roughly thirty times a day. The train covers sixteen miles of beautiful Devon countryside, and you step off practically on the High Street.
By car, Honiton is about twenty-five minutes from Exeter via the A30 and A35. Parking in town is straightforward — there are pay-and-display car parks off the High Street, and on-street parking is available in residential areas nearby.
By bus, the Stagecoach 9A service runs from Exeter to Honiton, taking approximately forty-five minutes. Services run roughly hourly on weekdays.
The train is the best option, honestly. It is quick, regular, affordable, and removes the need to worry about parking or navigating narrow Devon lanes.
For the ideal Honiton day trip from Exeter, catch a mid-morning train. Browse the antique shops and visit Allhallows Museum before lunch, eat at The Holt, then walk it off along the Otter Valley in the afternoon. You will be back in Exeter by teatime, probably carrying something you did not intend to buy.
A Town That Deserves to Be Better Known
Honiton does not shout about itself. It is not a tourist honeypot like Dartmouth or a cultural destination like Totnes. It is a proper working market town that happens to have one of the finest collections of antique shops in England, a world-class lace collection, excellent places to eat, and some of the most beautiful countryside in Devon on its doorstep. It is also one of the easiest day trips from Exeter you can make — twenty-three minutes on a train, no advance planning required.
The best days out are the ones that surprise you. Honiton surprises people consistently — with the quality of the antiques, the depth of the history, the beauty of the valley, and the warmth of a town that has been welcoming visitors for seven hundred years without making a fuss about it.
Bring a friend. Browse the shops. Learn about lace. Eat well. Walk by the river. These are simple pleasures, but they are the ones that stick.