Britain's first cup of tea was served in Yorkshire not London, new evidence finds

Britain’s first ever cup of tea is suspected to have been drunk in Yorkshire not London, according to a new discovery.

The earliest known shopping list was found in the archives at Temple Newsam House in Leeds which includes an order for a four shilling bottle of the beverage.

The apothecary list was for medical ingredients including “China drink” which is what tea would have been referred to as at the time.

It is thought that the shopping list could have belonged to some of the first tea drinkers in Britain.

Rachel Conroy, curator at Temple Newsam House stumbled upon the list by chance.

She said: “This document is an exciting discovery which shows the people who once lived at Temple Newsam were real northern trend-setters of their day and were among the first in the country to enjoy a cup of tea centuries before it became such a staple in all our homes.

“Although it may be strange today for us to think of it as an unusual, exotic drink, back in the 1640s, tea had only just begun to make its way to England and would probably have been something of a novelty and quite a status symbol”.

The list is dated December 8, 1644 making it 16 years older than a diary entry by a man named Samuel Pepys which mentioned tea in 1660.

Mr Pepy’s diary entry was previously thought to have been the earliest mention of the brew.

Tea is believed to have spread to Europe from its Asian homeland in the mid to late 1500s, however it did not take off in Britain until much later.

During the 1600s it was thought that it possessed properties which included "preserving perfect health until extreme old age" and "making the body active and lusty".