Time For Tea: Tea the Fifteenth

Now I know just why Franz Schubert

Didn't finish his unfinished symphony

He might have written more but the clock struck four

And everything stops for tea.

Featured in Jack Buchanan's 1935 film, "Come Out Of The Pantry"

(Goodhart / Hoffman / Sigler)

Wrangham House Hotel, Hunmanby, North Yorkshire - Sunday 7th July 2013

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Tea Takers

Sarah Ryan

Paul Ryan

Olivia Ryan

Lucy Holland

Kit Holland

Isobel Holland

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Tea on the Yorkshire coast had been on my wishlist from very early on. It was both a beautiful location and also a chance to take tea with a very old and dear friend Lucy, who comes each year from Dubai to visit her in-laws at Hunmanby, near Filey.

Taking a recommendation from the 'locals' we repaired to the Wrangham House Hotel, a former vicarage, situated, perhaps unsurprisingly, just behind the church, for the ceremonials.

The hotel is an attractive rambling Georgian house. Pevsner informs me that the east wing was added in 1803 by Archdeacon Wrangham to house his library. Those were the days, when country parsons had the means to add wings to their houses, and had libraries expansive enough to merit them.

It is a very attractive setting and the glorious summer day meant we saw it at its best. We took tea in an elegant wood pannelled drawing room, with leather armchairs and chesterfields, and low tables, accompanied by the harmonious cooing of wood pigeons from the leafy garden - a very English idyll.

Kit practising for his dotage, when he snoozes in a chair at his club:

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Tea was a very generous affair with large plates of sandwiches, freshly made scones, an enormous pot of clotted cream, chocolate cupcakes and a large and very enjoyable raspberry sponge cake, all accompanied by a very generous heap of fragrant strawberries.

It very satisfactorily satisfied the needs of all those present.

After a while the children headed out into the garden and found the slightly less Georgian delights of a trampoline to keep them occupied, while we enjoyed more tea, cake and highly sophisticated conversation, at our leisure.

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Fifteenth Tea - Fifteenth Year

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Visiting Lucy and the children on their summer residences in the area has been a great excuse to revisit the beaches of my childhood at Filey and Flamborough. I'm sorry, South East England, but when this is your standard, then the Sussex and Kent coast doesn't quite cut it.

After tea we drove down to Hunmanby Gap and spent several hours enjoying the perfect weather on the sands of Filey bay, framed by the white cliffs of Flamborough head and the red brown of Filey Brigg. A kite, some badminton racquets, a beach ball, a child who thought it was perfectly reasonable to swim in the North Sea; a sailing ship with vast white sails on the far horizon - such a very fine day.