Time For Tea: Tea the Thirty-Seventh

I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea
T.S. Eliot - Portrait of a Lady

Monk Fryston Hall Hotel, North Yorkshire - Friday 11th April 2014

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Tea Takers

Sarah Ryan

Paul Ryan

Jill Fairley

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Serendipity led to tea in Monk Fryston - Paul was alerted to some dining offer at Monk Fryston Hall via some internet scheme and it immediately struck me as a very suitable location.

The village is situated South East of Selby in the Vale of York, and at one stage my father used to drive me through here each day as he took me to and from school. In some far distant year, I think around 1884, my paternal grandmother was born in Monk Fryston, and my Dad often pointed out to me the inn where this great event took place, her father having been an ostler there. So tea with the shades of the ancestors seemed only fitting.

The birthplace of Jane Shan, later Thacker:

Monk Fryston Hall, just across the road from The Crown is a very attractive stone mullioned manor house, in attractive and stately gardens. The oldest parts of the building date back to the Twelfth Century when a Benedictine monastery stood on the site.

Augmented and refashioned over the centuries, as is typical of so many country seats, by the Eighteenth Century the grounds also featured a zoo, an aviary and a boating lake. The entertainments offered today are not on quite so exotic or lavish a scale, but it has the requisite gentility of a country house setting and a more than suitable site for the next installment of the odyssey.

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We took tea in the dining room which runs the length of the front of the house, and was light and smartly appointed.

The service was friendly and helpful (if not of the greatest finesse) and when they realised that the message requesting provision of plain scones had been missed they were most apologetic and tried several times to ply us with extra sandwiches and cakes.

An interesting twist to the presentation of the tea was the inclusion on the cake stand of chutneys to accompany the sandwiches. These were not to my taste (and I do query the wisdom of putting them on the stand itself and next to the jam and cream) but it was nice to offer these as optional and did mean the sandwiches were largely unadulterated and well suited to my fussy palate.

The scones were pleasant, although not as light as they might have been, and the clotted cream and jam were plentiful which is always a sign of generosity of spirit in such establishments. The sweets included a very pleasing vanilla cream dessert, a light cream sponge swirl and little biscuits sandwiching cream and fruit. As a spread it fulfilled its brief very well.

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Tea with Jill

This was another particularly delightful reunion - Jill was my A-level English teacher, and has been a hugely important influence in my life, both as someone who helped shape the way I read and learn myself and as greatly significant model for me of what good teaching is. I still stand at the front in my own lessons and think 'how would Jill deal with this?' Perceptive, thoughtful and quietly passionate about her subject she inspired and challenged me and I know I wouldn't have been able to make as much of my university education or the opportunities that have come up since if it hadn't been for her academic grounding and encouragement to engage critically and reflectively.

It was lovely to see her and to catch up for the first time in a couple of years. She is excellent company and we had a lovely time talking about what has been happening in our lives, but also about history, ideas and books.

Spring sunshine, an interesting historic and personally linked location and a very important guest - an excellent tea indeed.

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