A tearoom is a small room or restaurant where beverages and light meals are served, having a sedate or subdued atmosphere. The term may also refer to a room dedicated to the serving of tea in a private house.

A customer might expect to receive cream tea

Cream tea

A cream tea, Devonshire tea, Devon cream tea or Cornish cream tea is tea taken with a combination of scones, clotted cream, and jam....

 or Devonshire tea, often served from a china

Porcelain

Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials, generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between and...

 set, and a scone

Scone (bread)

The scone is a small Scottish quick bread especially popular in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand,Belgium and Ireland, but are also eaten in many other countries. They are usually made of wheat, barley or oatmeal, with baking powder as a leavening agent...

 with jam and clotted cream

Clotted cream

Clotted cream is a thick cream made by indirectly heating full-cream cow's milk using steam or a water bath and then leaving it in shallow pans to cool slowly. During this time, the cream content rises to the surface and forms 'clots' or 'clouts'...

 – alternatively a High tea may be served. In Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 teas are usually served with a variety of scones, pancake

Pancake

A pancake is a thin, flat, round cake prepared from a batter, and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Most pancakes are quick breads; some use a yeast-raised or fermented batter. Most pancakes are cooked one side on a griddle and flipped partway through to cook the other side...

s, crumpet

Crumpet

A crumpet is a savoury griddle cake made from flour and yeast. It is eaten mainly in the United Kingdom and other nations of the Commonwealth. Crumpets are somewhat similar in appearance, not in flavor, to North American pancakes, where both have pores caused by expanding air bubbles.- Etymology...

s and other cakes.

In a related usage, a tearoom may be a room set aside in a workplace for workers to relax and (specifically) take refreshment during work-breaks. Traditionally a staff member serving food and beverages in such a tearoom would have been called a tea lady

Tea lady

A tea lady is a woman in an office or working environment, whose sole job is to provide beverages and light snacks during the allocated tea break. Tea ladies are a mainly British custom. They entered the mainstream in the UK during the second world war, when tea ladies were used in an experiment...

.

Historical development

Tea first arrived in England during Cromwell's protectorate and soon became the national drink. Tea drinking became a national pastime for the English. As early as 1784 Rochefoucald noted that"Throughout the whole of England the drinking of tea is general". Nevertheless, it was Anna Russell, Duchess of Bedford is credited with the invention in 1840 of afternoon tea

Thomas Twining

Twinings

Twinings is a marketer of tea based in Andover, Hampshire, England.- History :The founder of Twinings, Thomas Twining, opened the first known tea room, at 216 Strand, London, in 1706, which is still operating today. The firm's logo, created in 1787, is one of the world's oldest in continuous use...

 opened the first known tea room in 1706, where tea is still sold at 216 Strand, London

Strand, London

Strand is a street in the City of Westminster, London, England. The street is just over three-quarters of a mile long. It currently starts at Trafalgar Square and runs east to join Fleet Street at Temple Bar, which marks the boundary of the City of London at this point, though its historical length...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 today. In 1787 the company created its logo, still in use today, which is thought to be the world's oldest commercial logo that has been in continuous use since its inception. Under Associated British Foods

Associated British Foods

Associated British Foods plc is a global food, ingredients and retail company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Its ingredients division is the world's second largest producer of both sugar and baker's yeast and a major producer of other ingredients including emulsifiers, enzymes and lactose...

 since 1964, Stephen Twining now represents the company's ten generations. In 2006, Twinings celebrated its 300th anniversary, with a special tea, and associated tea caddies. Twining's is a Royal Warrant

Royal Warrant

Royal warrants of appointment have been issued for centuries to those who supply goods or services to a royal court or certain royal personages. The warrant enables the supplier to advertise the fact that they supply to the royal family, so lending prestige to the supplier...

 holder (appointed by HM The Queen).

In the 18th century tea was an expensive (and heavily taxed) luxury for the rich, also available in Coffee houses. After doubts and arguments about possible health risks and the suitability of the beverage for "persons of an inferior rank", the increasing reaction to working class drunkenness in the temperance movement

Temperance movement

A temperance movement is a social movement urging reduced use of alcoholic beverages. Temperance movements may criticize excessive alcohol use, promote complete abstinence , or pressure the government to enact anti-alcohol legislation or complete prohibition of alcohol.-Temperance movement by...

 led to tea being promoted as an alternative, and from the 1830s many new cafes and coffee houses opened up as a temperance alternative to pubs and inns.

There is a long tradition of tea rooms within London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 hotels, for example, Browns hotel which has been serving tea in its tea room for over 170 years The author Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

 makes numerous references to tea rooms in his books set in Victorian England.

In 1864, the Aerated Bread Company

Aerated Bread Company

The Aerated Bread Company Ltd was founded in the United Kingdom in 1862 by Dr. John Dauglish. Its aim was to mass produce healthy, additive-free breads using a new bread leavening technology invented by the company's founder...

 opened the first of what would grow to be known as the A.B.C. Tea Shops. The idea for opening the tearoom is attributed to a London-based manageress of the Aerated Bread Company "who'd been serving gratis tea and snacks to customers of all classes, [and] got permission to put a commercial public tearoom on the premises." The tearooms were significant since they provided one of the first places where women of the Victorian era could take a meal — sans male escort — without risk to their reputations. By 1923, the A.B.C. tea shops would number 250, second only to J. Lyons and Co.

J. Lyons and Co.

J. Lyons & Co. was a market-dominant British restaurant-chain, food-manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1887 as a spin-off from the Salmon & Gluckstein tobacco company....

 that opened thirty years after A.B.C.

In 1878 Catherine Cranston

Catherine Cranston

Catherine Cranston , widely known as Kate Cranston or Miss Cranston, was a leading figure in the development of the social phenomenon of tea rooms. She is nowadays chiefly remembered as a major patron of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald, in Glasgow, Scotland...

 opened the first of what became a chain of Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms in Glasgow

Glasgow

Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...

, Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, providing elegant well designed social venues which for the first time provided for well-to-do women socialising without male company and which proved widely popular. She engaged up and coming designers, becoming a patron of Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, watercolourist and artist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable influence on European design...

 who designed several interiors, and the complete building of The Willow Tearooms

Willow Tearooms

The Willow Tearooms are tearooms at 217 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, Scotland, designed by internationally renowned architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which opened for business in October 1903...

 which provided a strikingly modern exterior as well as a series of interesting interior designs. Similar establishments became popular throughout Scotland.

However, from the 1880s fine hotels in both the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 began to offer tea service in tea rooms and tea courts, and by 1910 they had begun to host afternoon tea dances as dance crazes swept both the U.S. and the U.K. Tea rooms were established catering for all classes of British society, most notably the chain set up by J. Lyons and Co. who opened their first teashop in 1894 at 213 Piccadilly, London, and set up a series of tea rooms known as Lyons Corner Houses. Tea rooms of all kinds were widespread in Britain by the 1950s, but in the following decades cafés became more fashionable, and tea rooms became less common. Country tea rooms offering cream tea

Cream tea

A cream tea, Devonshire tea, Devon cream tea or Cornish cream tea is tea taken with a combination of scones, clotted cream, and jam....

s are still a tourist attraction in many areas, particularly in Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

 and Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

, and tea rooms can be found in most towns and villages. In Glasgow, The Willow Tearooms have been restored after years of having been absorbed into a department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

, and now run a recreation of other Mackintosh interiors in another establishment in Buchanan Street near the site of one of her original tea rooms.

See also

• A.B.C. Tea Shops
• Afternoon tea
• Coffee break
  Coffee Break
  Coffee Break is an online book on the NCBI Bookshelf created and maintained by staff at NCBI, a branch of the National Institutes of Health. The book consists of small chapters which are each written about a different topic in the world of Biomedicine. There are currently 32 chapters, and it was...
  
  
• Tea house
  Tea house
  A tea house or tearoom is a venue centered on drinking tea. Its function varies widely depending on the culture, and some cultures have a variety of distinct tea-centered houses or parlors that all qualify under the English language term "tea house" or "tea room."-Asia:In Central Asia this term...
  
  
• Coffee house
• Charles Rennie Mackintosh
  Charles Rennie Mackintosh
  Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, watercolourist and artist. He was a designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and also the main representative of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom. He had a considerable influence on European design...
  
  
• The Tea Room
• teany
  TeaNY
  Teany, sometimes stylized as TeaNY or teany, is the name of a tea café, restaurant and beverage distributor in New York City founded by electronic musician Moby with ex-girlfriend, Kelly Tisdale. The Teany Café opened in 2002 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York at 90 Rivington Street...
  
  
• Tea ceremony
  Tea ceremony
  A tea ceremony is a ritualised form of making tea. The term generally refers to either chayi Chinese tea ceremony, chado Japanese tea ceremony, tarye Korean tea ceremony. The Japanese tea ceremony is more well known, and was influenced by the Chinese tea ceremony during ancient and medieval times....
  
  
• Chinese tea culture
  Chinese tea culture
  Chinese tea culture refers to the methods of preparation of tea, the equipment used to make tea and the occasions in which tea is consumed in China. The terms chayi "Art of Tea 茶藝" and "Tea Ceremony" have been used, but the term "Tea Culture茶文化" includes more than just the ceremony...
  
  
• Teaism
• British tea culture
  British tea culture
  Since the 18th century the British have been the largest per capita tea consumers in the world, with each person consuming on average 2.5 kg per year. The popularity of tea occasioned the furtive export of slips to tea plants from China to British India and its commercial culture there,...
  
  

External links

• Ethical Tea Partnership: Working for a responsible tea industry
• Great Tearooms of America Tearoom listings with color photographs, descriptions, maps, etc.
• UK Tea Council: Tea 4 You
• UK Tea Council: Tea Guild - directory of all the top tearooms in the UK
• History of tea rooms in America
• TeaGuide Worldwide Tea Room Directory
• TheGlasgowStory: Kate Cranston
• Classic Cafés: An intimate history
• The Official Website of the Tea Room Appreciators
• TeaMap Website to locate tea rooms and tea houses in the United States
  United States
  The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
  
  
• Sympathy for the Kettle New York City Tea Room New York City
  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
  
  .
• Two Leaves and a Bud Tea Room in Concord, NC.