Royally good teatimes
Text by Jane Pettigrew
The county of Berkshire has always been high on tourists’ lists of places to go and things to see. It is home to Windsor Castle, the largest inhabited castle in the world and said to have been a favourite residence of the late Queen; Windsor Great Park, where visitors can explore the ancient royal landscape of forests, grasslands, lakes, and gardens; Eton College, the famous public school where 18 British prime ministers were educated; Ascot Racecourse, which is very closely associated with the Royal Family; and Basildon Park, which became the home of Downton Abbey’s fictional aristocratic family in season five of the period drama.
For tea addicts who love tea and afternoon tea, it is often disappointing that, even in very popular tourist venues and historic towns and cities in the UK, there are few traditional tearooms. We can find cafés that serve pots of tea, but that’s not at all the same thing. However, sometimes we come across a really wonderful tearoom or hotel tea lounge that serves excellent tea and wonderful teatime food in a welcoming ambiance of calm, elegance, kindness, and courtesy. It is a real joy when that happens, and Berkshire does rather well in the number of excellent tea places to which it is home. So, the following eight tea venues included here are some of the best to be found in a region of Britain that, because of its connections to a very long line of kings and queens, is often called the Royal County of Berkshire.
