At the end of the nineteenth century, a major development was the appearance of tea rooms. The first tea room is said to have been the brainchild of a manageress working for the Aerated Bread Company (known as ABC). The story goes that while working at the ABC shop on Fenchurch Street in London, she started serving free tea and snacks to her best customers. This proved so successful that she asked the directors whether they would consider establishing such a practice on a commercial basis. They agreed and the first tea room was born. By the end of the century, there were at least fifty ABC tea rooms. Other companies followed their example, including Kardomah, Lockharts and the Express Dairy Co., but Lyons was without doubt the most successful. After starting life as a tobacco business in 1887, Lyons quickly branched out into catering. By 1894 the company had established a chain of tea shops – and, from 1909, Lyons opened its famous corner houses, more of these later – which were to become an important part of daily life for many British workers.

Queen Victoria, the inspiration for the famous Victoria sponge, enjoyed tea perhaps more than any king or queen before her. Her endorsement certainly helped establish the habit of taking afternoon tea, which by the 1860s had become widespread amongst the rich and by the end of the century was also common amongst the middle classes. The wealthy, again possibly inspired by the habits of Queen Victoria, were also fond of larger and more formal versions of afternoon teas, known as tea receptions and ‘at homes’. These could cater for up to two hundred guests and usually took place between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m, during which people could come and go as they pleased.

Tea was seen as such a marketable commodity that a few businessmen used it as a means to advertise or boost a separate enterprise. David Lewis, founder of Lewis’s department stores (first in Liverpool and later in Manchester and Birmingham), started selling ‘Lewis’s Two-shilling Tea’ in the 1880s. By buying straight from the tea ships at Liverpool docks, Lewis was able to offer affordable tea to his customers. Within three years of launching it, Lewis was selling about 20 000 lb of tea a week. When he opened his Birmingham store in 1885, he cannily placed the tea counter right in the centre of the ground floor where it would act as a magnet for tea-craving customers.

John Horniman was one of the earliest retailers to see the potential of this approach. In 1826 he was the first to sell pre-weighed, pre-packaged and labelled tea. This had a number of advantages. While the tea was guaranteed to be unadulterated, its weight was clearly marked on a foil-lined packet which kept the leaves fresh and safe from dirt. Another advantage was that Horniman could use the packet, together with targeted advertising campaigns, to promote his name. Horniman’s Tea soon became a recognisable and reliable brand.

The tea produced in India and Ceylon was mainly black, whereas Chinese tea was both black and green. Over the course of the nineteenth century Britain became – and still is today – a nation of black tea drinkers. At the same time, tea, since it was now manufactured as an industrial product often in huge plantations, became cheaper and more widely available. Some tea merchants, including Thomas Lipton, went as far as buying their own tea plantations. By cutting out the middleman, they were thus able to reduce prices. In 1890, Lipton bought four tea estates in Ceylon, after which he adopted the slogan ‘Direct from the Tea Gardens to the Tea Pot’, which appeared on colourful tea packets and advertisements. He made sure his name, which soon developed into a successful brand, was placed on as many items as possible, including the wooden boxes of tea carried by the elephants and the tea pickers’ baskets.

A few years before the war, steps had already been taken towards growing ‘British’ tea. In 1834, the East India Company established its first Tea Committee. Its aim was to create ‘a plan for the establishment of the introduction of tea culture into India’. A few years earlier, the British had taken over Assam in north-east India: it was here, in 1835, that tea plants were first found by Englishmen. How ironic it is, then, that instead of focusing on growing Assam tea, the British decided to introduce Chinese tea plants into Assam, in the mistaken belief that these would produce better tea. Gradually, they realised their mistake and by the late 1880s all tea grown in Assam was from the region’s native tea plant, now called Camellia sinensis var. assamica.

In about 1805 Josiah Spode perfected a revolutionary type of porcelain containing animal bone ash. Strong, translucent, pure white and cheap to produce, bone china became the material of choice for teapots and related tea wares. Its affordability meant that even the rising middle classes could now afford a ‘proper’ tea service, while the rich and fashion-conscious could indulge in a new set every few years.

While the higher echelons of society generally converged in the large pleasure gardens, smaller versions of these – known as tea gardens – served the needs of the middle to lower classes. Situated mostly in the suburbs of London, they offered an attractive day out for local families. Here, visitors would drink tea in specially designed tea rooms or in shady arbours, stroll amongst the lawns and beside lakes, and maybe enjoy a game of bowls. Some of these gardens had delightful names, such as Adam and Eve’s Garden, Merlin’s Cave, Finch’s Grotto and The Three Hats!

As tea consumption rose, so did the number of places where one could enjoy it. From the very beginning of the century, coffee houses and tea merchants proliferated. The most famous of these was without doubt the Twinings Golden Lyon shop on the Strand. Opened in 1717 by Thomas Twining, it was London’s first tea shop. Three hundred years on and it is still selling tea, making it the oldest London shop still trading from the same site. Thomas Twining became famous for his tea blending, paving the way for the creation of such well-known blends as Earl Grey (invented by Jacksons of Piccadilly in the 1830s and named after Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, British Prime Minister between 1830 and 1834) and English Breakfast (which, perhaps surprisingly, was created in only 1933 by Twinings).

As tea drinking became ever more popular amongst the rich, some country house owners went as far as remodelling their homes to provide a dedicated tea-drinking room. Dunham Massey in Cheshire in one such example. Its Tea Room was used for the after-dinner drinking of tea, served in a splendid silver service. Similarly, in the 1760s Claydon House in Buckinghamshire acquired its Chinese Room: a private room where family members could sip tea while seated in a cosy alcove modelled on a Chinese tea house. At the same time, some Elizabethan and Jacobean outdoor banqueting houses, originally designed for the enjoyment of a pudding course after a formal meal, were transformed into tea houses. Others – such as the dual-purpose Tea House Bridge by architect Robert Adam at Audley End in Essex – were created from scratch and placed in newly fashionable landscaped gardens.