The First Tea in Scotland

By 1705, George Smith, a Scottish goldsmith advertised green tea for 16 shillings per pound and Bohea black tea at 30 shillings per pound. He sold his expensive tea alongside his jewelry.

But, by the 1730s, tea-drinking fell out of favor for a few decades as it was denounced as being effeminate and a threat to the masculinity of the Scotsman. Some nationalists saw it as just another plot by the English to undermine the Scottish spirit. Dr. Thomas Short published a pamphlet in 1650 warning that tea drinking would “lead to an idle sedentary life…Green tea thins the humors and contract the body fiber; Bohea tea smooth and softens fibers.”

Alas, a cup of hot tea is often the body’s best defense against the cold damp breezes that sweep in from the North Sea, and tea became a common beverage in the early 1800s as it became more affordable. Scotland saw the rise of many tea advocates over the next two hundred years.

Andrew Melrose & Company began selling tea in Edinburgh in 1812 and eventually obtained a Royal Warrant as tea purveyor to Queen Victoria and the royal palaces Hollyrood and Balmoral. Melrose was the first British company to legally obtain tea independently of the East India Company. His leadership helped lead to the end of the East India Company’s monopoly on tea in 1833 and the break-up of the quasi-monopoly held by the old established London wholesale dealers. In January 1836 alone, 1000 cases of tea arrived in Leith for Melrose. The company closed in 2004 after supplying tea to the UK and beyond for nearly two centuries.

Glasgow witnessed the genesis of Thomas Lipton’s tea empire in 1871 when he returned from a sojourn in America and opened his first store selling meats, cheeses and grocery items. Soon his 300 stores were selling tea grown on his estates located on the island country of Ceylon. Lipton’s, now owned by Unilever, is the world’s largest tea company, controlling 14% of the global tea market.

By 1875, Stuart Cranston installed a few tables and chairs in his Glasgow tea store for the comfort of customers. He offered tea with milk and sugar along with optional bread and cakes. His was the first sit-down tearoom in Scotland. But, before long, his sister Mary became the grand dame of the Glasgow tearoom movement when she opened five tearooms, some designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, architect of the Glasgow School of Art. Her Willow Tearooms remains open to this day on Sauchiehall Street.