Supper & Tea

SUPPER AND TEA IN THE SERVANTS’ HALL WERE much more informal meals than dinner. At Downton, we frequently see just a few servants at a time having tea, with the others busy about their duties. The core of the meal was, of course, the tea itself, brewed in large quantities and drunk hot, strong, sweetened with sugar, and with a generous splash of milk. Whereas the tea for the family may well have been Chinese, or perhaps the finest Indian tea, downstairs the brew would have been stronger and punchier. Leaves were used until there was no more flavor or color left in them. By the Edwardian period, tea had come down in price sufficiently that there was very little profit to be derived, as had been the case in previous centuries, from cooks selling off the used tea leaves (they were “upcycled” into tea for the very poor, with the addition of dried hedgerow leaves, colorants, and anything else that came to hand). The spent leaves were, however, used by the housemaids for cleaning carpets.