The history of tea and coffee is closely linked to the history of the East India Company. Tea and coffee first arrived in Britain in the 1650s and 1670s.
London’s first tea shop was opened by Thomas Twining in 1706. As tea became the preferred beverage of genteel ladies and ultimately a staple of British culture, coffee on the other hand was unabashedly masculine.
Early advertising described coffee as “a simple, innocent thing, incomparable good for those that are troubled with melancholy”. Soon, coffee houses sprung up around the City of London and by 1675 there were an estimated 3,000 in England alone.
Stephen Chater’s talk considers changing fashions in non-alcoholic drinking in the 17th and 18th centuries and their effect on the development of the City of London and its business and cultural interests.