Right about now there’s a piece of furniture, let’s say it’s a Raj-era sideboard, being loaded into a cargo container and making the four-week journey from its exotic home in India all the way to Devon. It will take four weeks to get here via the Cape of Good Hope because the Houthis are currently using Western-bound ships as target practice in the Gulf.
Finally it will arrive at the reclamation yard in Exeter and take its place among the multinational array of household objects. Tobys Reclamation – which celebrates its 40th anniversary next year – is home to quirky, rustic, quality, reclaimed antique furniture from around the world.
When you visit the former railway station site in Exminster, every corner holds a surprise, every item has a tale to tell. It might be that colourful sideboard from the subcontinent, or it could be a 19th century table from Scotland, a garden statue from a stately home in Devon, a fireplace from an Edwardian villa, a travel trunk from the attic, or a table from a monastery in Belgium.
If you don’t have room in your home for humongous French stained glass doors, or you wouldn’t know where to put a ride-along Thomas the Tank Engine it doesn’t matter. You can just snoop around for an hour and wonder who in their right mind does.
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Olly Heriz-Swift, a self confessed ‘old hippy’ in a capitalist world, is the owner. “My thing is I like this place to be quite eclectic,” he says. “It sounds crazy but it’s anything I like that I think my customers will like.
“The minute the shop looks too one way we can really notice business drop off. People like to come here, walk in and see.
“If you walk out now you’ll see an Indian cupboard next to a Belgium sideboard next to an antique mahogany English table. All of these things are mixed together. I like it to be this boiling pot of different things
“One month we’ve got Hungarian objects, then the Belgium load, then we get Indian, then I go off like I’m going to do this weekend and drive around here finding stuff. Every day I get at least ten emails from people in the area saying, I’m clearing out my garage or my parents have died and need to clear out the house.
“I like to walk in and know that table came from a house ten miles from the shop right next to a sideboard we’ve shipped from India. It is something that’s really unique and makes us stand out.”
There is an amazing array of stock at Tobys. The business is loved for its unique style. The old railways sidings outside – the station itself shut for good in 1967 – house all kinds of weather-beaten bricks and tiles, distressed doors, and frankly quite strange outdoor ornaments and machinery.
A fantastic and colourful array of signage from another age – Nosegay for pipe and cigarette, News of the World, Brooke Bond Tea, Nut Brown Tobacco ‘has that nutty flavour’ – overlook the yard. From the car park down its garden statuary, benches, reclaimed timber, reclaimed doors, reclaimed fireplaces, ironmongery, door knobs and fittings.
Beyond the car park you get into the really ‘old school’ reclamation which is bricks, roof tiles, guttering, and lumps of stone.
Inside is furniture and interiors. Olly sits at his desk and discusses the journey his business has been on. The Crosby, Stills and Nash classic ‘Our House’ plays. The ultimate fixer-upper song seems appropriate. “Actually, we’ve been playing this album since Monday and it’s getting too much now,” Olly smiles.
Tobys the business was started in Newton Abbot in 1985. There were once four branches, one in Torquay the other in Taunton. Exminster, which opened in 1985, is the last one standing.
For many years the focus was on architectural antiques but since 2015 the business has shifted to interior furniture.
That was the year Olly took over. He had joined Tobys in 2007 having previously worked as the assistant manager of Oddbins. Growing up in Exeter in a home stacked with antiques he decided to follow his passion.
“I had a whole summer after my redundancy and was wondering what to do with my life,” he says. “Then the job here came up and I jumped at it. I was a general dogsbody, lugging lumps of rock around. It was a shock to the system at first, going from behind the counter, and I didn’t think I’d last long.”
All Olly’s energies are now in finding quality reclaimed interiors. He has built a network of suppliers in Europe and India and fills the store with what he finds.
“I go out to India when I can and there are a couple of reclamation yards I go to out there that are huge. I go picking around those yards and it’s either shipped in its original form or restored and shipped over in a container.
“We’ve got our first container of the year coming in the first week of August so it’s literally leaving India on Saturday. Also, I have a guy in Hungary who sends me WhatsApp photos of stuff he’s got. I then choose what I want and a lorry driver brings it here. It takes five days.” He has a similar arrangement in France and Belgium.
Most items sell quickly. “We had four beautiful dining tables from Belgium that only arrived last week and we’ve sold all of them,” says OIly.
Some are more difficult to shift. Take the huge marble gazebo that stands outside. You can’t expect something like that to sell quickly. “But there is a massive demand for reclaimed, ethically-sourced antiques,” says Olly. “As long as I keep finding them they do sell surprisingly well.”
It won’t be news to anyone running a business to hear the retail climate is tough at the moment.
“There’s no getting away from it, it’s exceptionally difficult,” says Olly. “We managed to survive Covid and Brexit, crazy times, and thought we were through, but it’s worse now than it was then. This is probably our worst year. The cost of living really has hit home. Anyone selling anything regarded as anywhere near luxury or non-essential is feeling that. But we are still supplying and still endlessly surprised.
Tobys’ mission statement is written on the board in Olly’s office. It says: “Beautiful, functional and fairly priced.” If ever he loses focus he reminds himself of those core values.
“Traditional this industry focused on older people with lots of money,” he says. “One of the things I tried to focus on was to make it much much appealing to younger people. Lots of people can’t spend £700 on a table. But we try to have something for everyone.
“The most reassuring thing is almost every day we hear people say, ‘This is the first time I’ve been here, wow what and amazing place’. Other people say ‘We come all the time, we actually love it’. When business is not going as well there is a lot of introspection and I always worry that suddenly my taste will go off.”
Looking to the future Olly has just relaunched the website. The business is also active on social media and the weekly Friday Facebook post gets huge positive feedback. Tobys will also feature on Salvage Hunters in the autumn.
“Come down and have a look,” is Olly’s message to customers. “Even if people just want to come for a day out and look around.” You never know what you might find in a shop like Tobys or how far it has travelled just to get to your home.
Olly points to a pair of ornate interior columns. “These are from a local house,” he says. “A woman sold them to us recently. Her husband went out to buy her an anniversary gift and she was expecting some jewellery or something, and he came back with these. She jokingly said ‘You can imagine, he’s now my ex husband’ and she was selling them because of that.”