Mondays
Quiet night
No music, no quiz, no fuss. Bring a book. Order soup.
Exeter · Since the 1840s
A proper Exeter pub.
Candlelit snugs, dark oak panelling and stories in the walls — five minutes from the Quay, two centuries from anywhere else.
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Stories in the walls
Eighteen-forty something. A wedge of a building on a quiet Exeter corner.
No one quite agrees on the exact year — local historians have argued about it for the better part of a century — but somewhere in the 1840s the front door first opened, and people have been ducking under the lintel ever since.
The Hour Glass has been a labourers' pub, a quayman's pub, a soldier's pub on leave, and on a Tuesday in February, a very quiet writer's pub. It has stayed almost stubbornly itself.
The room
Step in from the rain. Take the corner seat. Nobody will rush you.
Candle-lit
From four o'clock, every evening, year-round.
Independent
No chain. No template. No upselling.
Unhurried
Stay for one. Stay for the evening. We don't mind.
Devon plates
A roast on Sunday. Good things on every other day.
The kitchen is small and proudly local — beef from a farm we can drive to, vegetables from market gardens the other side of the Exe, fish landed at Brixham that morning. Sunday roasts come with a Yorkshire the size of your fist and the kind of gravy that requires a second bread roll.
— a few things you'll find on the board
- Slow-roast Devon sirloin, Sunday only£19
- Steak & Otter Ale pie, mash, greens£16
- Brixham fish, beer batter, dripping chips£17
- Wild mushroom & Westcombe pie£15
On the pumps
Local ales. Properly kept. No nonsense.
We keep our cellar the old way: cool, quiet, and tended by people who know what they're doing. Mostly Devon, occasionally Cornwall (when we're feeling neighbourly), and always one guest cask from somewhere worth knowing about.
Exeter Brewery
Exeter Avocet
Pale, dry, citrus finish
Otter Brewery, Honiton
Otter Bitter
The pub bitter, perfected
St. Austell
Tribute
Cornish across the border, but we forgive it
St. Austell
Proper Job IPA
For those who mean it
Crediton
Sandford Orchards
Devon cider, straight from the barrel
Rotating weekly
Guest cask
Ask behind the bar — there's always a story
The Calendar
A place people return to.
Most weeks the same regulars on the same stools. We rather like it that way.
Wednesdays
Vinyl night
Records dug from local crates. Anyone can request, no one's judging.
Thursdays
The Quiz
Six rounds, properly hard. £2 a head. Winner takes the tab.
Last Sunday
Folk session
Devon folk musicians in the back snug. Acoustic, accidental, lovely.
By the Quay
A short walk from the river. A long way from the chains.
Five minutes on foot from Exeter Quay, ten from the Cathedral, fifteen from St David's station — but emotionally, we like to think, somewhere in the previous century.
- Address
- 21 Melbourne Street, Exeter, Devon, EX2 4AU
- Telephone
- 01392 519 200
- hello@thehourglassinn.co.uk
Word of mouth
"The kind of pub you walk into for one and stay in for four. Properly kept ale and a Sunday roast worth crossing the Exe for."
"Unmistakably itself. Candlelit, panelled, slightly eccentric — everything a Devon pub ought to be."
"I have been coming here for twenty-six years. The chair in the back corner is mine. Don't get any ideas."
An invitation
Pull up a chair by the fire. We'll keep one warm.
You don't have to book. You're always welcome to walk in. But for Sundays and Friday evenings, it tends to be a wise idea.