Afternoon Tea
social ritual
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Afternoon tea is credited to Anna, Duchess of Bedford, who in the early 1840s began asking for tea and a light bite in the late afternoon to bridge the long gap before dinner, then invited friends to join her. The fashion spread from country-house drawing rooms to London society and, eventually, to hotels and tea rooms across Britain.
The ritual had its own grammar: thin sandwiches, scones, and cakes arranged on stands, tea poured from silver pots, and dress that was elegant but not formal. It was served between four and five, when the working day of fashionable life paused, and it belonged above all to the drawing room — the woman's domain.
Tea revealed the domestic reach of empire. Every cup depended on trade with China and then British-grown tea from India and Ceylon, so that a quiet English afternoon was quietly underwritten by plantations half a world away.
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