Tea Plaques
The Tea Trade at St. Katherine Docks
This plaque is located on the north bank of St. Katerine Docks Marina. The closest bus stop, and entrance to the Marina nearest the plaque is St. Katherine Docks (TN), and the nearest tube station is Tower Hill. Please enter these GPS coordinates into Google Maps to find the exact location: 51°30'28.2"N 0°04'16.9"W.
Sir John Lyons House
This plaque is located on the north side of Sir John Lyon House and displayed behind a window. The nearest bus station is Millennium Bridge (Stop SF), and the nearest tube station is Mansion House. Please enter these GPS coordinates into Google Maps to find the exact location: 51°30'39.7"N 0°05'47.3"W.
The Tea Building at Shoreditch
This plaque is located .... The nearest bus stop is Bethnal Green Road (Stop L), and the nearest tube station is Shoreditch High Street. Please enter these GPS coordinates into Google Maps to find the exact location.
The Tea History Collection Banbury
This plaque commemorates over 350 years of the business of tea in the United Kingdom.
It was unveiled in June 2022 at The Tea History Collection in Banbury on the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, a great connoisseur of tea.
The business of tea began with the British East India Company who had a monopoly over tea from China & India. In 1669 The East India Company received 143 pounds of tea from their offices at Bantam (modern day Jakarta), Indonesia. The epicenter of the world’s tea business was in the City of London, spread across Plantation House (now Plantation Place), Mincing Lane, Fenchurch Street, Great Tower Street, Leadenhall Street, and St. Katherine’s Docks. At that time the City of London controlled over 85 % of the world’s tea trade.
There were 126 tea grower companies in 1897, 341 in 1933 and then 239 in 1969. In London there were 44 tea warehouses and 75 tea brokers. Tea was stored at St Katharine Docks which opened on 25th October 1828, with Butler’s Wharf following 65 years later in 1893 on the opposite side of the river Thames. It is estimated that there were around 20,000 tea merchants in the United Kingdom. The final London Tea Auction was held on 29th June 1998 at Sir John Lyon House.
The DCS Group headquarters is located at the same site as the old factory of The Northern Aluminium Company (part of Alcan) in Banbury. Alcan incidentally were the largest producers of aluminium foil for tea chests linings. Banbury was also the location of the world’s largest tea warehousing complex. Banbury Tea Warehouses Limited ran a complex which had a railway siding and roads for trucks and the most modern equipment of the day. Teas used to come from growing countries to Southampton, & then transferred to the Banbury warehouse.
This plaque is placed by The London Tea History Association & sponsored by Denys Shortt OBE in memory of his father Peter Shortt who was the Manager of the Langharjan Tea Estate in Assam owned by the Jorehaut Tea Company.