The Richard Hopkins

I’ve been sketching in Newton Abbot again, this time the local Wetherspoons pub, The Richard Hopkins. Here’s what the framed history inside the pub says about their name:

The premises housing this pub were built in the 1850s as private houses, later occupied by JF Rockhey, drapers. The pub takes its name, like the adjacent Hopkins Lane, from a former owner of the land on which they stand. Richard Hopkins was a baker from Highweek Street, whose family had been millers at Sherbourne Mills in the 18th century. Hopkins’ land reached from here to the river, and in the 1850s Queen Street was laid out on it to link the town with the railway.

It was Bensons for Beds in the 1990s when I first knew it and bought what was called a ‘matrimonial bed’ from there.

The pub is always busy, with drinkers glugging pints in the outside smoking area in the morning. There’s a trickle of people coming out of the betting shops nearby and heading disconsolately inside to drown their sorrows with what remains of their week’s wages.

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