Facts About Tea
I think you all know that tea is a prominent feature of British culture, but you may not know these three amazing facts.
Curiously, it was the London coffee houses that were responsible for introducing tea to England. One of the first coffee house merchants to offer tea was Thomas Garway. He sold both liquid and dry tea to the public as early as 1657.
Tea gained popularity quickly in the coffee houses, and by 1700 over 500 coffee houses sold it. This distressed the tavern owners, as tea cut their sales of ale and gin, and it was bad news for the government, who depended upon a steady stream of revenue from taxes on liquor sales.
By 1750 tea had become the favoured drink of Britain's lower classes.
'Tea' is a name for the evening meal, usually associated with the working class and is typically eaten between 5 pm and 7 pm. In most of the UK (namely North of England, North and South Wales, the English Midlands, Scotland, and in some rural and working class areas of and in Northern Ireland) people in these areas traditionally call their midday meal 'dinner' and their evening meal 'tea' (served around 6 pm), whereas the upper social classes would call the midday meal 'lunch' or 'luncheon' and the evening meal (served after 7 pm) 'dinner' (if formal) or 'supper' (if informal).
This differentiation in usage is one of the classic social markers of English. However, in most of the south of England, the midday meal is almost universally called 'lunch', with 'dinner' being the evening meal, regardless of social class.
Despite the common belief that the English are very refined tea drinkers, nowadays they only use tea bags and the loose leaf tea is an item of luxury. You cannot buy it in the every day shops. You have to make an effort and go somewhere, like a garden centre.
