luxtons pharmacy

Our Story

Luxtons the Pharmacy was established by Mr Ben Tucker Luxton in the early 1900’s.

George Wickham I, was the son of a postman and originally got a job as a laboratory assistant at the school of Pharmacy, Exeter in the early 1920’s. The professor took him under his wing and recommended that he attempt to study to become a Pharmacist himself. He did this and spent part of his apprenticeship working for Mr Luxton at Luxtons Pharmacy. On qualifying he quickly realised that as a Manager of a pharmacy you could earn £3 a year but if you owned one you could earn £4 and so he approached a bank and eventually took over the business of a Mr Botting in Sidwell Street, Exeter who was retiring.

George I became very successful very quickly and built up a small chain of Pharmacies, all North of the River Exe whilst his old friend and mentor Mr Luxton did the same South of the river in Exeter.

Alongside medicines and photography George Wickham sold wines and spirits as did most pharmacies. Petrol substitutes were also sold to help keep the motorists going during rationing. One of the pharmacies was adjacent the local cinema and he even painted the doorman in luminous paint to help him during the blackout. George I was an entrepreneur and inventor patenting his own remedies. He was particularly successful with Korn-Solvo for painful corns.

Sadly many of the Pharmacies were bombed during the Exeter Blitz but he survived only to become suddenly ill, dying in 1950 due to an infection at a time when antibiotics weren’t available. When he died, his son George Wickham II was 10 years old, therefore his mother continued to run the Pharmacies until the 1960’s when George II went to Bristol  to study Pharmacy.

At Bristol University he met his soon to be wife, Anne. They married and both ran Pharmacies in Cullompton, they then purchased Luxtons from Mr Luxton in the 1970’s as he was retiring. This was around the same time that George Wickham III was born.

Our Pharmacy

George Wickham III studied Pharmacy at the University of Bath and after 5 years in the Pharmaceutical industry joined the family firm, working in Luxtons from 1996. At this time the pharmacy only had 3 staff members.

George soon took charge of the Pharmacy and in 2002 relocated Luxtons as the pharmacy simply needed more space. The family run business got so successful that they again outgrew the space and had to refit it, expanding to take over the floor above and in 2014 installing the first Consis Dispensing Robot in the South West to meet the exceptionally high demand.

Luxtons later installed an Omnicell MDS in 2016 one of only 12 in the UK at the time. The pharmacy now have a team of more than 12 people as well as two robots!

We are here for you

Luxtons is a true community pharmacy that has been established for over 90 years and has been a family run business since 1927! Our hi-tech space has both a Dispensing and MDS robot. We offer a wide range of additional services provided by our highly experienced team of Pharmacists, ACTs and Dispensers.

As a pharmacy that has been run in the same family for generations, we pride ourselves in our innovative and modern methods of healthcare and pharmaceutical distribution methods, as well as our fabulous old-fashioned traditional customer service. Our customers and their families are our absolute priority and we are always by their side, providing them with excellent services and hands on customer care.