Early history of coffee in England

Venetian traders introduced coffee into Europe in 1615. Leonhard Rauwolf, a doctor and botanist was the first European to mention coffee.

In 1650 at Oxford University, the person name Jacobs opened the first coffeehouse. Two years later in London, Pasqua Rosee, a Greek, opened coffeehouse and printed the first coffee advertisement.

In the advertisement coffee beans describes as the berry of which ‘a simple thing yielding a liquor of countless merit’.

The first printed reference to coffee in English appears as chaona in a note by a Dutchman, Paludanus, in Linschoten’s Travels, which is first published in Holland in 1595.

The coffee house was the earliest form of eating and drinking establishment in England. Later, coffee houses had become a familiar part of the urban landscape.

It not only was a place of refreshment for ordinary citizens but became their meeting place for conversation and socializing.

For the price of a penny, it was possible to gain admission and be served with a dish of coffee and a pipe of tobacco.

Seeking a place to produce coffee that belonged to the empire, the British government began coffee cultivation in Ceylon around 1658.

By 1700 there, by some accounts, more than 2000 London coffee houses, occupying more premises and paying more rent than any other trade.
Early history of coffee in England