How Britain Went from a Coffee Loving Nation to a Tea-Drinking One

When coffee was cool ... the Moka Bar in Soho in the 1950s. Photograph: Hulton GettyA tea-drinking nation Britain may be, but London was once the coffee capital of Europe, second only to Constantinople in its number of coffee houses. One of the most famous scenes in British cinema is the beginning of The Ipcress File where the spy Harry Palmer (played by Michael Caine) grinds beans and then makes coffee in a cafetiere. This seems a humdrum activity to us, but in the 1960s making proper coffee singled you out as a dangerous maverick. No wonder that Ian Fleming, too, was very particular about the apparatus James Bond used to make coffee: (a Chemex), and the variety (Blue Mountain, from Jamaica). For my parents' generation and even when I was growing up in the 1980s, "coffee" meant instant coffee. Britain was a tea-drinking nation. From the look of intense concentration on his face, Caine gives himself away as a tea drinker in the film. He looks like he's diffusing a bomb rather than making a cup of coffee. It's a far cry from when England was the coffee capital of Europe. London's first coffee house was opened in 1652 by a Greek man called Pasqua Rosée. Between 1680 and 1730, London consumed more coffee than anywhere else on earth, second only to Constantinople in its number of coffee houses. They were the commercial heart of London, functioning as offices and meeting places. The Tatler, the Spectator and Lloyds insurance all started life in coffee houses. Wine merchants Berry Bros & Rudd originally sold coffee; they still have the original weighing scales in their St James's shop. Because of the coffee house's role in Britain's intellectual life, I have this mental image of them as sober places where men in powdered wigs delighted in fine Java and discussed the latest Adam Smith. They weren't. For a start, most would have sold alcohol. Some even sold people, as they doubled as brothels. Peter Ackroyd writes: "Coffee houses ... were generally somewhat dingy places, reeking of tobacco." The coffee in these places would have been pretty grim. A great cauldron of coffee would have been made in the morning and kept bubbling away all day. Contemporary sources referred to it as "bitter Mohammedan gruel" and "syrup of soot and the essence of old shoes". This might explain why, in the 18th century, Britain turned to tea. The coffee houses closed or became pubs or private members' clubs. It's only in the last few years that they have once again mushroomed (as the local boozer has declined). Once again they're being used as impromptu offices, though the standard of coffee is much better (even at Starbucks). Perhaps soon it will be the tea drinkers who will be considered dangerous sophisticates. I can just see the opening credits to a James Bond film in 2025: the camera pans over a pot, strainer, loose leaf tea and bone china, and then the audience gasps as Bond reaches for the sugar tongs. Henry Jeffreys is a drinks writer based in London. His first book, Empire of Booze, will be published by Unbound in 2016. Twitter: @henrygjeffreys