Georgian Tea Parties

Reviewed and updated April 2026

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, How About Afternoon Tea?, do not get a Georgian tea party and afternoon tea mixed up. They are very different things.

Tea drinking in Britain was popularised by the court of Charles II. By the end of the Georgian era (1837), tea had taken over from beer as the most popular drink consumed by all social classes.

For the upper classes, tea drinking became ingrained in the daily routine. It became a habit to serve it about one or two hours after dinner and households invited their acquaintances to ‘drink tea’ with them. ‘Drinking tea’ then became an evening entertainment. During the Regency (1811-1820), the tea business expanded by 150 per cent.

A bit about tea

During the Georgian era, all tea came from China—production in India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) had yet to begin. The East India Trading Company monopolised tea imports.

There were two varieties of tea for Georgians to drink. The upper classes enjoyed green tea in four varieties: imperial, singlo, gunpowder and hyson (one of the most expensive). The working classes enjoyed the cheaper black tea, also known as bohea, which came in five varieties: souchong, camho, pekoe, congo and common bohea.

Georgian Tea Parties — Image by Terri Cnudde from Pixabay

A pound of green tea cost around eight shillings (hyson could cost ten shillings or more) and common bohea cost just under two shillings. A pound of tea made approximately 200 cups, so this made it cheaper per cup than beer and why even the poorest families would set aside money to spend on tea and sugar. They also re-used the tea leaves to make it go further.

Cream or milk?

In a Facebook group, I came across a raging debate about whether the Georgians drank their tea with cream or milk. My original research suggested the wealthy drank it with cream, but I decided to dig a little deeper.

When it first arrived in Europe, tea was taken black, but as the beverage became more accessible and interwoven with daily life in the 18th century, people began to experiment with accompaniments.

The reason milk was initially added to tea was to protect the cups. Fine porcelain is very delicate and pouring hot water directly into the cup could make it crack. So, to protect their china, cold milk was added first. Many found the creamier taste more appealing, and hey presto, the rest is history!

The use of cream in tea was mentioned in Ian Mortimer’s book (see the sources). Mortimer quotes from The Case of Labourers in Husbandry Stated and Considered (1795) by the Reverend David Davies, which states that in a prosperous household, a visitor may be offered ‘fine hyson tea sweetened with refined sugar and softened with cream.’ Davies also says that less salubrious households drank ‘spring water just coloured with a few leaves of the lowest priced tea, sweetened with the brownest sugar’. (Page 271)

It appears that Jane Austen did not approve of using cream in tea. In a letter to her sister, Cassandra, Jane writes about a mutual friend (a Miss Fletcher) saying, “There are two Traits in her Character which are pleasing; namely, she admires Camilla, & drinks no cream in her Tea.”

That Jane mentions this means some people must have been taking cream in their tea, even if Jane herself disapproved.

What about lemon?

So, tea was expensive, cream was expensive, milk was expensive, and sugar was also expensive. What if you stretched your meagre budget to include tea, but didn’t want it black. Bring on a slice of lemon.

Citrus added a refreshing edge. Not to be out-done by the lower classes, the aristocracy quickly adopted it as a symbol of flair and elegance.

So far, I havent found any sources that mention honey being used to sweeten tea. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t. Honey was more accessbile than sugar and there were lots of honey-based alternative beverages available at the time, so why would someone who couldn’t afford sugar not try it?

To conclude this section, I think the choice of cream, milk, lemon, sugar or honey was down to personal taste, finances, and possibly snobbery.

What to expect at Georgian tea parties

If you received an invitation to a Georgian tea party, you should expect it to be an evening of entertainment (not at four or five o’clock in the afternoon).

Inviting someone to a tea party, rather than dinner, enabled households to save on the costs of feeding others a meal. It also allowed a larger number of guests because the lady of the house did not have to worry about seating them all around the dining table.

We drank tea again yesterday with the Tilsons, and met the Smiths—I find all these little parties very pleasant.
Jane Austen, April 1811.

The lady of the house kept the tea locked away, to prevent the servants from pilfering it. She, or her daughters, would unlock the tea caddy and prepare the tea in front of the guests before serving it.

You may also find a selection of finger foods. As you will already have dined at home before attending, they may offer you a selection of nibbles and treats, such as:

Candied fruits
Glacé fruits
Gingerbread
Crumpets or toast (with butter, of course)
Seed cake
Shrewsbury cake

Unlike afternoon tea, an event mostly associated with ladies, a tea party was treated like another evening social event and attended by all. Georgian tea parties offered conversation, cards, parlour games, reading, music, and dancing.

Two tea parties

This research was used in my Austen-inspired short story duet, Tea for Two. The Regency romance duet features two tea parties, two romances and two cameo appearances from Austen’s characters.

Check it out!

P.S. Taking cream in tea doesn’t make it a cream tea

Cream tea, also known as Devonshire tea, is a light afternoon snack comprising a pot of tea and warm, round scones ( not triangular), clotted cream, and fruit jam, typically strawberry or raspberry.

Believed to have originated in Devon and Cornwall, the act of eating a type of dense cake with cream and jam is at least medieval, but starts to be mentioned in literature as ‘cream tea’ in the 20th century.