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Picture source: Pete Dakin

The Kings Arms was an old coaching inn on the High Street. In the mid 19th century there were 24 coaching inns in Honiton. This was one of the inns were hot pennies were thrown on Honiton fair day, the others being The Angel, The Star, and The Three Tuns.  Throwing hot pennies is still a tradition on Honiton fair day, it is said to originate from when the gentry got amusement from watching the poor burn their fingers picking up pennies that  had been heated and thrown from the upstairs windows of inns on fair day. After closing in 1975 it became Kings Arms antiques; it is now a clothes shop.

The building was originally used as The Bakers Arms, present by 1766.

Clive Schneidau (April 2013)

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