Afternoon Tea
A Duchess with a sinking feeling at four o'clock gave Britain its poshest snack, and the jam-or-cream argument has divided two counties ever since.
Published
Quick Facts
- Popularised
- 1840s, in aristocratic drawing rooms
- Usually credited to
- Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford (1783–1857)
- Classic order
- Finger sandwiches, then scones, then cakes
- Traditional time
- Around 3pm to 5pm
- Not the same as
- High tea, a hearty working-class evening meal
- Great county rivalry
- Devon (cream first) versus Cornwall (jam first)
- Famous claimant
- The Langham hotel in London says it began serving afternoon tea in 1865
- Northern Irish favourite
- Fifteens: 15 digestives, 15 marshmallows, 15 glacé cherries
The Duchess who got peckish
Britain's most genteel meal began with a rumbling stomach. In the 1840s, Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford and a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, found that the long gap between breakfast or lunch and a dinner served at eight o'clock left her with what she called a sinking feeling. Her answer was a pot of tea, bread and butter and cakes, taken in her room at Woburn Abbey. Before long she was inviting friends to join her. The habit spread through fashionable society and then down the social ladder, helped along by the fact that it needed no servants waiting at table, just a good teapot. Tea itself was already a national obsession. Catherine of Braganza, who married Charles II, had made it fashionable at court in the 1660s, and Thomas Twining was selling it on the Strand from 1706. What the Duchess added was the timetable.
Low tea, high tea and a lot of confusion
Here is the detail that surprises people: high tea is not the posher one. Afternoon tea was nicknamed low tea because it was taken in the drawing room, from low tables and sofas. High tea was eaten at the high dining table, usually around five or six, and was a proper meal for people coming home from work. Think pies, cold meats, eggs, cheese, bread and a big brown pot of tea. In parts of Scotland and northern England, "tea" still means that early evening meal, which is why a southerner and a Glaswegian can talk past each other about what is for tea. Hotels later muddied things, and plenty of menus now say high tea for what is really afternoon tea. Purists wince, but the tiered stands keep coming.
How it's done: the rules of the tiered stand
The classic format works from savoury to sweet. At the bottom come crustless finger sandwiches, with cucumber the traditional favourite. Next are scones, served warm with jam and clotted cream. At the top sit the little cakes and pastries. Tea itself is usually loose-leaf and brewed in a pot. Darjeeling, Earl Grey and a classic English breakfast blend are the staples, and many places add a glass of fizz. London's grand hotels made a ritual of it. The Langham says it served afternoon tea as early as 1865, and the Ritz's Palm Court, which opened with the hotel in 1906, became one of the most famous rooms for it in the world. Elsewhere, the same format turns up in country-house hotels, department stores and village tearooms.
The jam-and-cream war
Few arguments in Britain generate more heat than the cream tea. In Devon, the scone is split, spread with clotted cream, then topped with jam. In Cornwall, the jam goes on first and the cream sits on top, often with a dollop that stands proud. The Devon camp points to cream on bread as an old local custom, with a tale tied to Tavistock Abbey. The Cornish camp says that jam first lets the cream take centre stage. Neither side will budge, and visitors who pick wrongly in the wrong county can expect a raised eyebrow. Even the word scone divides the country. Some say it to rhyme with gone, others with cone, and nobody has ever won that one either.
Tea tables beyond the south
Each nation has its own spin. In Yorkshire, Bettys Tea Rooms, founded in Harrogate in 1919 by the Swiss-born Frederick Belmont, turned tea into an institution, complete with its famous Fat Rascal, a fruity scone-like bun with a face. In Glasgow, Miss Cranston's tea rooms became fashionable from the 1870s, and her Willow Tea Rooms, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1903, showed that tea could come with serious style. Wales brings bara brith, the speckled tea bread, and Welsh cakes cooked on a griddle. Welsh settlers even took the tradition to Patagonia, where tearooms in Gaiman still serve Welsh tea in Argentina. In Northern Ireland, the table might hold soda farls, tea breads and fifteens, a no-bake traybake made from 15 digestive biscuits, 15 marshmallows and 15 glacé cherries, bound with condensed milk and coconut.
Notable people
- Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford
- Catherine of Braganza
- Thomas Twining
- Frederick Belmont
- Catherine Cranston
- Charles Rennie Mackintosh
- Queen Victoria
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