TV & Film
Wine House, St Michael's Alley, Cornhill, London EC3
Why is the cafe so historically important
and why is it such a scandal that so many are being allowed to
die off unlamented?
The years after WW2 heralded a new spirit
of optimism and national confidence in Britain. Consumer culture
became king and as a symbol of this progress and prosperity a
new Contemporary style dominated architecture
and design through the 50s and into the 60s
This was a fresh style moving on from the
minimalist rigours of the Modernist
movement. It represented a new vibrancy with materials like Formica,
leatherette chrome and plastic coming to the fore. The 'streamlining'
cult was especially evident in kitchen interiors and the functional
spaces of cafes.
The positivity of an age created new tastes
and trends, with the cafe's Italian styling a ubiquitous cheery
symbol of national regeneration and outward lookingness. But
today you have to look harder than ever to find decent, intact
cafes with classic Formica tables, lino floors, proper seats
and small cabinets of biscuits and crusty rolls. Cafe family owners are nearing retirement age and
the children don't want to take over the business. Also many
leases are coming to an end for the central London cafes and
the resale value of cafe buildings in the property boom is too
vast to ignore.
Too many have been replaced and refitted
with ghastly plastic moulded interiors devoid of atmosphere.
But those that are left are national treasures.
Dating from 1802, the term café
comes from the French 'café' (meaning 'coffee' or 'coffeehouse')
and the Italian 'caffe' (also meaning 'coffee'.) In 1839 'caféteria'
had been coined in American English from Mexican Spanish to indicate
a coffee-store. But the café has been reinvented many
times over the centuries. Here's a brief timeline excerpted from
the history section of the forthcoming Classic
- The precursors to the
original coffee houses were the monasteries and inns that had
offered hospitality to travellers since the twelfth century.
Expansion of urban populations during the fifteenth century led
to a profusion of 'cook shops' - notably around London's Bread
Street and East Cheap - where meal prices were controlled and
the public could bring their own pies.
"first coffee house in Christendom" was established
in Oxford in 1650 by a Jew called Jacob at the Angel in the parish
of St Peter in the East. Two years later, a Greek servant named
Pasqua Rosee (see illustration above) began running a coffee
shop in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill in the City of London. Coffee houses became such popular forums for discussion
they were dubbed "penny universities".
- By 1670 the coffee house movement had
overtaken - and become a key element of - Restoration London.
By the 18th century, London was teeming with the liquid said
to resemble 'syrup of soot or essence of old shoes' and places
to drink it in.
- From 1675, a thousand or so coffee houses
flowered during the reigns of Charles II, Queen Anne and George
- By the 19th century however, coffee houses
had become exclusive clubs as a prolific press and an efficient
post and transport system undermined the function of the coffee
houses as centres of communication.
England abandoned coffee as the demands
of the East India Company to exchange its preferred stimulants
pushed the domestic market into tea consumption. But due to the
success of the Dutch navy in the Pacific, tea became fashionable
in the Dutch capital.
As the craze for all things oriental swept
Europe, tea became part of the national way of life and Dutch
inns provided the first restaurant tea service as guests were
furnished with portable tea sets complete with heating unit.
The first tea samples reached England
between 1652 and 1654 and proved popular enough to replace ale
as the national drink. Tea mania swept across England as it had
earlier spread throughout France and Holland.
- Beginning in the late 1880's in both America
and England, fine hotels began to offer tea service in tea rooms
and tea courts. By 1910 hotels began to host afternoon tea dances
as dance craze after dance craze swept the United States and
- Through this time, the English working
classes largely kept to the pub but the 19C coffee house hadn't
entirely died out. A few clung on as 'workers' cafés',
described by one contemporary as: 'dull and humble; they have
sallow holland blinds, drawn deep down behind sallow window-sashes...'
- But in the 1880s the temperance movement
tried to revive the coffee house scene in an attempt to divert
the working man from the perils of drink. Modeled on the mahogany-trimmed
taverns promoted by the beer industry, 'Coffee taverns,' one
pamphlet stated, 'must show there are beverages as comforting
as beer, that there are beverages to be bought as cheap as beer.'
- The coffee taverns were largely overtaken
in the 19th century by small establishments run mainly by Arabs,
Turks, Greeks and Sicilians which had become the haunts of 'foreigners'
as well as stray 'Bohemians'.
- Soho built on its traditional French,
Italian and Spanish immigrant-centre origins as a new generations
of outsiders move into London. After WW2 an influx of Italian
families building on their long established catering expertise
settled in Clerkenwell (Little Italy), spread West to Soho and
eventually expanded all over the capital and the country.
- Gradually, as Britain pulled through the
travails of the post-war economy London rejuvenated. The Festival
of Britain in 1951 signals an unequivocal move forward. Somehow,
this feat of mass cultural re-engineering would impel the arts
in Britain for the following decade and a half.
- A greater informality of eating had begun
as the first sandwich bar, Sandy's, opened in Oxendon St in 1933.
Soon snack bars spread throughout the capital as the culture
of fast-food was established.
- In 1935 the first milk bar is set up in
Fleet St by an Australian, Hugh D. McIntosh. Within a year there
are 420 throughout Britain. As a further twist on the theme,
coffee bars with a reputation for low-life and fast times emerged
to mainstream popularity in the 1950's.
- In 1945 Gaggia altered the espresso machine
to create a high pressure extraction that produced a thick layer
of crema. By 1946 cappuccino had been christened for its resemblance
to the colour of the robes of the Capuchin monks. The unique
selling point of the classic café had arrived
- By 1953 coffee bars sprang up all over
Soho. The first was The Moka espresso bar at 29 Frith St. Opened
by Gina Lollabrigida, it became the model for many classic Formica
cafes to come.
- The coffee bars rapidly spread to other
metropolitan areas: The Arabica, Brompton Road (G.R.Cole FRSA);
Bamboo, Old Brompton Road (John Bainbridge); The Coffee House,
Haymarket (Antoine Acket with E.E.Barlow ARIBA); Mocamba, Brompton
Road (Douglas Fisher)...
- The cafes attracted CND activists, jazzers,
noveau existentialists, nascent rock n' rollers, beatnik baby
boomers, Piccadilly exquisites and a whole new post-war set of
UK On The Roaders who, like Gelina in Mark McShane's novel 'The
Passing of Evil', wilfully inhabit: 'the seedy-garish world of
back-street London... restless rootless... beautiful, amoral,
modern siren(s) of doom in a jungle of dance halls, caffs and
- By the mid-1960s, 40% of the general populace
were under 25. The scene was set for a British creative renaissance
as diverse art, writing, musical, criminal and sexual subcultures
thrived within the burgeoning cafe communities...
- In the 1970s, severe bust lead to a halving
of the UK's manufacturing employment base. Large companies began
leaving the capital en masse. Increasingly, British industry
(for so long dependent on the spoils of Empire) fell behind the
leaner economies of the US, Germany, Japan and Eastern Europe.
- Unemployment, virtually unknown in Britain
in the 1950s, began a long spiral upwards, the subsequent recession
accompanied by high inflation and a collapse in living standards.
As proprietors found more profit in selling food, so the coffee
bars gradually all turned into general cafes or cheap restaurants.
- Only a couple of die-hard cafe chains
managed to last out the 1960s and hang on into the 1970s: the
Lyons' Wimpy Bars (established in 1954) and the Golden Eggs (set
up by Philip and Reggie Kaye in the early 1960s). The Wimpys
avoided gimmickry, maintaining simple duo-tone minimal interiors
but the Golden Egg was: "The most controversial use of colour
in British restaurantswhere riotous colour schemes and brilliant
opaline lights have brought a jazzy mood to eating in low-price
- Despite their once epochal freshness,
by the 1980s cafes were well and truly off the menu. A revitalised
pub culture, swarming burger conglomerates and insidious sandwich
operations pushed all aside...
| Iain Sinclair interview
Classic Cafes | Quentin
Classic Cafes |
Mr Burkeman interview
| Lorenzo Marioni interview
| Adrian Maddox interview
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