Dawlish News on Queen Street to close after 45 years

21 September 2026

Gareth Taylor is closing Dawlish News on Queen Street. He is 77 and has run the shop since September 1981. He estimates that, over those 45 years, the rounds from number 4 have put about 13 million newspapers through Dawlish letterboxes.

When he bought the business from Ted Storey, deliveries ran to about 300 households. Other newsagents in the town shut or dropped their rounds, and Dawlish News took them on. At the peak, in 2001, 1,200 customers were on the books, 364 days a year. Stationery, greeting cards and paperbacks filled the shelves. In the mid 1990s Taylor fitted a one-hour photo lab for 35mm film. Digital cameras finished that side of the trade. Print sales have gone the same way. The round now stands at about 360.

The shop itself is older than either owner. Number 4 is thought to have been a newsagent since 1904, when it traded as Storey’s. Ted Storey had been a Daily Mirror reporter during the Second World War. He came home to look after the shop after his father died and stayed 42 years, selling to Taylor at 72. Taylor had spent 15 years with W H Smith in shop and area management. He renamed the premises Dawlish News and, in his own words, turned it into “a mini replica of W H Smith.”

Specialist newsagents have been thinning out across the country. Figures cited by the BBC this spring put the number of UK shops specialising in newspapers and stationery at 2,285 in 2023, down from 4,597 in 2011. Taylor has not said what will happen to the remaining 360 deliveries, or whether another trader will take the unit.

He thanked “the scores of youngsters who, back in the day, worked delivering newspapers, who must all be middle aged now,” and the residents who kept the shop going. The Mid Devon Advertiser reported the retirement on 20 September.