A Tea Trails ritual; delicious savouries and cakes served by your butler, accompanied by yesterday’s Ceylon tea manufacture. The custom of tea drinking dates back to the third millennium BC in China, although it was highly popularised in England in the later centuries. However, it was not until the mid-19th Century that the concept of ‘afternoon’ or ‘high tea’ first appeared.

The concept was introduced by Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, in England, in 1840. She’d become hungry around 4 o’clock in the afternoon and as dinner was a fashionably late affair, she'd request for a tray of tea, bread and butter, and cake. This pause for tea became a fashionable social event. During the 1880’s upper-class and society women would change into long gowns, gloves and hats for their afternoon tea which was usually served in the drawing room between four and five o’clock.

A chronicle of remarkable narratives from across our island and resorts