Garraways Coffee House was a London coffee houseinExchange Alley from the period when such houses served as important places where other business was performed.[1] Its original proprietor, Thomas Garway, was already said to be the first person in England to sell tea prior to the house's founding, and when he began to sell it here in 1657 it became the first place in England to do so.[2] The Hudson's Bay Company conducted its first sale of furs at the coffee house in 1671.
Different kinds of merchants patronised different coffee houses,[3] with tea merchants patronising Garraway's, as well as many investors in the South Sea Bubble of the 1710s.[2] The establishment became famous as a sandwich and drinking room, it being said that the sandwich-maker spent two hours preparing each day's food.[2]
The works of Charles Dickens include multiple references to Garraway's,[3] and Daniel Defoe wrote of it being frequented by wealthy traders from the City.[4]
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However, because it served merchants directly engaged in the tea trade, Garraways "coffee house" in Exchange Alley, in London, is generally thought to be the first to have replaced coffee with tea. Garraways later served as the locale of several stories by Charles Dickens, who was among the first to describe these houses as places where upwardly middle-class merchants and stockbrokers with limited means could meet to pool their skills and financial resources.
51°30′46″N 0°05′13″W / 51.5129°N 0.0870°W / 51.5129; -0.0870
