TEA
See
Also: CAFES; CHINESE FOOD; CIGARETTES; COFFEE;
COFFEEHOUSES; FORTUNE's BOUNTEA; MUSEUMS The
Horniman Museum & Gardens; MUSEUMS, DISAPPEARED & LATENT The Bramah
Museum of Tea & Coffee; NAUTICAL The Cutty Sark; TRADING COMPANIES The East
India Company
Tony
Benn
The former Labour government minister Tony
Benn is renowned for his copious intake of tea.
He has expressed the view that food is 'an interruption between two mugs
of tea'. In 1981 he gave the newspapers
copy when he was hospitalised with a nervous system condition. The tabloid press decided he had been driven
mad by drinking too much of his favourite beverage, his previous general political
conduct being taken as the early signs of his supposed condition. As the matter turned out, he had
Guillan-Barre syndrome. He recovered
from it.
Location: 12 Holland Park Avenue, W11
4UX (purple, red)
St Mary's Hospital, Praed Street, W2 1NY
(red, turquoise)
See Also: HOMELESSNESS Dennis Rough;
HOSPITALS St Mary's Hospital; THE
LONGEST SUICIDE NOTE IN HISTORY; NUCLEAR WEAPONS Lovely Cuppa
Winston
Churchill
In the 1930s Churchill wanted to establish
tea as a crop that could be grown in Britain.
Earl
Grey
In the 19thC a citric-flavoured
tea was named after the 2nd Earl Grey, the Whig prime minister whose
reformist administration had ended the East India Company's monopoly of the tea
trade in 1834. There is a shroud of
uncertainty as to who actually bestowed the designation. It can be regarded as having been something
of a backhanded compliment. The bergamot
oil that gave the beverage its distinctive taste was employed as a substitute
for orange and lemon leaves, which looked like tea when dried. Unscrupulous tea traders had taken to using
them to adulterate their stock with in order to bulk it up. Drinkers of the resulting brew had developed
a taste for it. Therefore, a variety
that had the flavour was created to meet demand.
The Boscawen family have owned the
Tregothnan estate in Cornwall since 1335.
Evelyn Boscawen is a descendant of the Earls Grey. In 2013 it was reported both that he had been
growing tea on the property and that he was planning to export some of it to
Shanghai.
Website: www.gov.uk/government/history/past-prime-ministers/charles-grey-2nd-earl-grey
https://tregothnan.co.uk
Jonas
Hanway
The merchant Joseph Hanway (1712-1786) was
opposed to tea. He drew a comparison
between its growing popularity in Britain and opium consumption in the Ottoman
Empire.
Location:
23 Red Lion Square, WC1R 4PS (blue, red)
An
Ig Nobel Preparation
Sir John Wolfe Barry's achievements included
co-designing Tower Bridge (1894). The
crossing is a metal structure that has a stone cladding. In 1901 the knight called upon the Council of
the Institution of Civil Engineers to establish a body to oversee the
standardisation of iron and steel sections.
The Engineering Standards Committee was set up. Two years later the body registered the
British Standard Mark to indicate that an item was up to standard . This symbol became known as the
Kitemark®. In 1931 the organisation changed
its own name to the British Standards Institution.
The 1999 Ig Nobel prize for literature was
awarded to the B.S.I.. This was done to
acknowledge a six-page-long document (BS6008) that the Institution had issued
upon the 'method for preparation of a liquor of tea'. The same year Len Fisher of the University of
Bristol received the physics prize for working out the optimal manner in which
to dunk a biscuit into a cup of the beverage.
Location: 389 Chiswick High Road, W4
4AL
See Also: BRIDGES Tower Bridge
Website: www.bsigroup.com
www.improbable.com/ig
The
marquise Bethinks
In the 18thC part of the
importance of taking tea lay in the fact that the sequence in which the people
present were served indicated their social rank with respect to one
another. The marquise de
Montandre (d.1772) was the widow of a Huguenot field marshal. She was of the view that her late husband s
title entitled her to outrank countesses.
However, the fact that her departed spouse's French honour had been
attainted by the French crown meant that there was a degree of uncertainty
about the issue. On the whole, she
sought to carry the matter through an air of haughtiness. However, upon occasion she preferred to avoid
pressing it.
Horace Walpole knew of an incident when she
and some titled women had been socialising with one another in the townhouse of
one of their number. The tea items had
been brought into the chamber where they were.
Without referring to this development, the marquise had declared
that the time had come for her to leave.
The countesses present had been served their cups of the beverage. The widow had then declared I have bethought
myself, I think I will have one cup.
Location: 69 Brook Street, W1K 4ER. The marquise de Montandre's home.
(red, yellow)
See Also: CLASS Precedence
Tea
Bags
In 1945 the Labour government lowered the
price that it was prepared to pay for tea.
The tea companies, in order to cut their own margins, started to pack
tea directly for the maturing bins. This
led to tea drinkers complaining about the amount of dust in the tea that they
bought. However, the powder was
important for ensuring that the beverage had a good taste. Therefore, the companies sought to find a way
of selling tea with the dust but to the public in a form that they would not
mind it being in.
Sandy Fowler, an engineer then living in
Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), with the assistance of his wife Ann, devised the modern
tea bag. This proved to be the
solution. Mr Fowler did not take out a
patent for his invention.
Tommy Cooper
The comedian-magician Tommy Cooper
(1921-1984) was of the habit that whenever he took a ride in a taxi he would
give the driver 'something for a drink'.
He would reach in his wallet and hand over a tea bag.
See Also: TAXIS
The
Tea Trade
The Dutch had imported tea by 1606. Its first mention in English dates from 1658
when it was advertised as being for sale from The Saracen's Head
coffee-house in Sweetings Rents by the Royal Exchange. Up until then it had been known as char.
Catherine of Braganza, who had been raised
in Portugal, was a tea drinker. From
about 1670 the East India Company started to import tea regularly.
By the mid-19thC Mincing Lane was
the centre of the wholesale tea trade.
Indian teas grown in Assam then began to arrive in London. Coming from a colony they had the
considerable commercial advantage of not having a duty charged upon them. Therefore, Chinese teas were more
expensive. This reinforced their cachet.
Until the 1970s tea auctions were held in
Plantation House. The trade was
undermined by: containerisation; the growth of supermarkets and the decline of
independent grocers.
In 1998 the tea auctions stopped. They had been held for 319 years.
Location: 30 Fenchurch Street, EC3M
3BD. The site of Plantation House. (red,
brown)
Mincing Lane, EC3R 7AG (red, blue)
See Also: NAUTICAL The Custom House;
STREETS, SPECIALISED; WHISKY Blended Whiskies and Wine Merchants
Twinings
Daniel Twining was a weaver in
Gloucestershire. In the 1680s he
concluded that the county's cloth industry was in decline. Therefore, he and his family moved to
London. His son Thomas served an
apprenticeship with an East India merchant.
This left the youth with a knowledge of tea as a commodity.
In about 1706 the younger Twining became the
proprietor of Tom's Coffee House in Devereux Court. This was one of London's leading
coffeehouses. It drew much of its custom
from the lawyers who worked in the nearby Inns of Court. It was noted for the savants and wits
whose chose to congregate there. The
proprietor drew upon his knowledge of tea to ensure that the establishment
developed a fine reputation for serving the beverage. He prospered and went on to establish a
business that wholesaled tea and coffee.1
Richard Twining was a grandson of
Thomas. The dynasty's growing economic
success was testified to by the fact that he was schooled at Eton College. He entered the family business and soon
became one of London's principal tea merchants.
The action that he is remembered for was his persuading the government
to reduce the rate of tax on tea. The
American War of Independence - a conflict that had followed on from the Boston
Tea Party of 1773 - had involved large military expenditure by the state. This had increased the National Debt. The Treasury needed to find money with which
it could service its enlarged financial obligations. Tea smuggling was occurring on a vast scale. Richard convinced William Pitt the younger,
the prime minister, that if the duty on the commodity was reduced radically
then the economic viability of the illicit trade would be removed and that the
tea that was being handled within it would enter its legal counterpart and thus
become taxable. The premier used the
Commutation Act of 1784 to lower the rate that was levied on the commodity from
100% to 25%. The merchant's evaluation
of what would happen soon proved to have been correct. It was no longer worth the smugglers while
to handle tea. As a result, the overall
revenue from the duty increased.
Location: 216 Strand, WC2R 1AP (red,
red)
See Also: PERIOD PROPERTIES Period
Shops
Website: https://twinings.co.uk
https://twinings.co.uk/pages/twinings-flagship-store=216-strand
1.
Thomas Twining honoured his father by becoming a member of the Weavers
Company.
White
During the 19thC various members
of the Rothschild family had townhouses to the north of the western portion of
Piccadilly. One visitor to the Seamore
Place home of Alfred de Rothschild asked a servant if some milk could be added
to his tea. The reply came as to whether
he would prefer his milk to be from a Hereford, a Jersey, or a Shorthorn.
The Astors were given to taking a cow with
them on holiday to ensure that they had a supply of milk.
Location: Curzon Street, W1J
5HQ. No 1 Seamore Place disappeared
beneath a westward expansion of Curzon Street.
See Also: THE ROYAL PARKS Green Park,
Milkmaids Passage
Why
Did Karl Marx Hate Good Tea?
Because all proper tea is theft.
Yorkshire
Tea
The Yorkshire Tea brand was created for
Taylors of Harrogate by Warren Ford (1933-2023), a Londoner, who was a tea
consultant.
David Backhouse 2024