The Pharmacy

I’ve been sketching in Newton Abbot again. There are still many historic places despite the widespread destruction of our heritage. The Pharmacy Cafe is one of them. Originally Bibbings the Pharmacist, it’s now a tea rooms with a fabulous selection of cakes. Here’s what they say of their history:

Pharmaceutical Chemist Shop of Mr. John Henry Bibbings (1852 – 1942.) Newton’s oldest tradesman. The son of an East Street Blacksmith, he was apprenticed to Hinton Lake, Chemist in Exeter, and after passing numerous examination his father set him up in business in this shop in 1877. Mr. Bibbings is recorded to have won a silver medal for his Herbarium in 1873 (a reference collection of pressed medicinal plants.) At this time the vast majority of drugs were still of plant origin and were imported from all over the world as bundles of roots, gourds of collected resin, strips of bark, or huge bales of herbage. These had to be verified as being of the correct medicinal species, and of a grade that would meet the stringent requirements of the British Pharmacopoeia updated in 1867 to bring uniformity to prescribed preparations across the Empire.

Inside are 117 small drawers with labels in pharmaceutical Latin of the drugs popularly used at the time. One says ‘Opium’.

Part of my Postcards from Newton Abbot series of postcard-sized ink and watercolour sketches.

Ink: Platinum brun sepia pigmented ink
Pen: Sailor Fude de Mannen fountain pen
Watercolour: Derwent Graphitint watercolours

More Postcards from Newton Abbot