The English have the reputation of being a nation of tea drinkers, but this wasn't always the case. By the end of the 17th century, the English were the biggest coffee drinkers in the Western world, and coffee houses became the places to be seen. As well as gossip, you could pick up talk of the latest intellectual developments in science, politics, and so on, in this age of scientific discovery and progress. At first coffeehouses were very basic; a room with a bar at one end and a few plain tables and chairs. Customers paid a penny for a bowl, not a cup of coffee. A polite young woman was usually in charge of the bar because it was thought her presence would ensure that the customers didn't use bad language or cause any trouble. An added attraction was that coffee houses provided free newspapers and journals.

But people didn't go to the coffeehouses just to drink coffee. They went to talk. They soon developed from simple cafes, where anyone with a penny could go for a drink and a chat, into clubs. People started to go to coffee houses where they would find other people who had the same jobs or who shared their interests and ideas, to talk and conduct business.

The great popularity of coffee houses lasted about a hundred years. In the later 18th century, increased trade with other countries made such luxuries as coffee cheaper and more easily available to the ordinary person. As a result, people started to drink it at home. Also, at this time more tea was imported from abroad, and the century of the coffeehouse was replaced by the domestic tea-party as the typical English social occasion.