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Afternoon tea

node · earth

Afternoon tea is the British practice of a light mid-afternoon meal of tea with bread, cake or sandwiches, conventionally credited to Anna Maria Russell, seventh Duchess of Bedford, around 1840. That attribution is disputed: taking tea in the afternoon was already ordinary among aristocratic women before her, and English spa towns such as Bath and Harrogate advertised 'afternoon teas' in the 1750s and 1760s. What the 1840s do mark is the codification and social fashion of the ritual among the Victorian elite, from which it spread downward. It is the last and youngest element in this Journey — the thing that reads as most timelessly English is roughly two centuries old, and depended on cheap colonial tea and cheap colonial sugar to become general.

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Evidence · 2
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No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 2
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 30 blocks · 2 evidence · 40 related

  1. Story
  2. Afternoon tea is the British practice of a light mid-afternoon meal of tea with bread, cake or sandwiches, conventionally credited to Anna Maria Russell, seventh Duchess of Bedford, around 1840. That attribution is disputed: taking tea in the afternoon was already ordinary among aristocratic women before her, and English spa towns such as Bath and Harrogate advertised 'afternoon teas' in the 1750s and 1760s. What the 1840s do mark is the codification and social fashion of the ritual among the Victorian elite, from which it spread downward. It is the last and youngest element in this Journey — the thing that reads as most timelessly English is roughly two centuries old, and depended on cheap colonial tea and cheap colonial sugar to become general.
  3. Knowledge
  4. London
  5. Tea culture
  6. Afternoon tea
  7. Connections
  8. Tea culture
  9. London
  10. Tea
  11. Afternoon tea
  12. Tea buried in the Han Yangling mausoleum
  13. Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
  14. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
  15. Tea
  16. Afternoon tea
  17. Tea first shipped to Europe by sea
  18. Boston Tea Party
  19. Commutation Act cuts British tea duty
  20. First Assam tea auctioned in London
  21. London Marathon
  22. New York City
  23. White City Stadium
  24. The 1908 Olympic marathon fixes 26 miles 385 yards
  25. The first London Marathon
  26. The Great Exhibition
  27. Google DeepMind
  28. Evidence
  29. Afternoon tea was codified as a Victorian social ritual, conventionally though contestably attributed to Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford, around 1840.
  30. British tea duty was cut from about 119 per cent to 12.5 per cent, collapsing the smuggling trade and converting tea into a mass-consumption commodity.
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No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.

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/atlas?object=PHENOMENON_AFTERNOON_TEA&experience=PHENOMENON_AFTERNOON_TEA