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All the United Kingdom England London Twinings Tea Shop
Gastro Obscura

Twinings Tea Shop

A 300-year-old tea shop that brought tea to the English people, not to mention the Queen herself.

London, England

Added By
Molly McBride Jacobson
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CAPTION
Twinings tea shop on the Strand.   Global Panorama/CC BY-SA 2.0
A mosaic at the entrance to the Twinings shop.   Jacklee./CC BY-SA 3.0
The doorway to Twinings tea shop.   Bri/CC BY-SA 2.0
A figure atop the Twinings doorway.   Dun.can/CC BY 2.0
Goods inside the Twinings shop, with portraits of Twining family members.   Jacklee./CC BY-SA 3.0
Twinings Tea Shop   Xavixavir / Atlas Obscura User
  SEANETTA / Atlas Obscura User
  Julius Spada / Atlas Obscura User
Oh the places we will go.   spadaadjusting / Atlas Obscura User
Photo taken 2018   Gavin / Atlas Obscura User
  AdOYo / Atlas Obscura User
  jcgire / Atlas Obscura User
Twinnings Tea Master Class   https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/...
Inside the shop   rbenn250 / Atlas Obscura User
Twining’s history in prose   Pengwn / Atlas Obscura User
Twinings decorated for Christmas   Mintenk0 / Atlas Obscura User
  AdOYo / Atlas Obscura User
  Collector of Experiences / Atlas Obscura User
Inside the shop   Xavixavir / Atlas Obscura User
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About

You'll have to excuse the exoticized Chinamen figures atop the Twinings tea shop doorway at 216 Strand. They've been sitting up there for about three centuries, in which time the cultural acceptability of such caricatures has lessened, and tea is more often associated with British gentry than with Chinese merchants.

As a young man Thomas Twining apprenticed under an East India Company merchant, importing goods from exotic locales, coffee and tea in particular. Twining's mercantile career began in 1706 when he opened a small storefront on a busy London thoroughfare called the Strand. He called it Tom's Coffee House, and it soon became a popular gathering spot for fashionable aristocrats.

Despite his shop being dedicated to coffee, Twining soon garnered a reputation for having some of the finest tea blends in London. Within a decade he ceased selling coffee entirely and almost exclusively sold dry packaged teas. This allowed women to partake in tea-drinking at home as well, as coffee houses were male-only establishments. Twining expanded his business, opening up more shops, and eventually growing it into the tea empire it is today. 

Though we think of Britain's relationship to tea being as old as the nation itself, the drink had only been introduced in the 1660s by a Portuguese queen. With the expansion of East Indian trade and merchants like Twining though, tea quickly became the national beverage.

Today Twinings is synonymous with the history of British tea. Over 300 years later, the original Twinings shop on the Strand is still in business. The Twinings logo, a simple, gold sign bearing the company name, has remained unchanged since 1787, making it the second oldest corporate logo still in use, behind that of Stella Artois, which was first introduced in 1366. In 1837, Queen Victoria granted the company a Royal Warrant, a merit which has given Twinings the honour of providing tea to the Royal family ever since. 

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Royalty Shops Food History

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Added By

Molly McBride Jacobson

Edited By

Pengwn, thesecretcity, mawawi9806, SEANETTA...

  • Pengwn
  • thesecretcity
  • mawawi9806
  • SEANETTA
  • Collector of Experiences
  • rbenn250
  • Gavin
  • nickylouder
  • AdOYo
  • Mintenk0
  • Xavixavir
  • spadaadjusting
  • Julius Spada
  • jcgire

Published

September 27, 2016

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Sources
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Twining_(merchant)
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinings
  • https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings
Twinings Tea Shop
216 Strand
London, England
United Kingdom
51.513275, -0.112812
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