Feature

A stroll around the grounds

On a bracing Saturday afternoon about two dozen people mill around outside the doors of the church of St Michael, Cornhill, in the City of London, here to worship at the altar of coffee, banking and news. Clare Hill talks and walks us through a guided tour of London’s coffeehouse history.

With his battered wool coat and Scandinavian scarf, our guide Dr Matthew Green resembles a 29-year-old Dr Who from Hackney. His Oxford PhD on 17th and 18th century coffee culture may explain his odd mixture of erudition and perkiness.

We delve into a labyrinth of lanes and courtyards, where Green begins to evoke 1650s London; the filth and noise of Cornhill, the queue of people snaking down an alley, clamouring for a cup of a strange black brew being sold from an exotic marquee, where the Jamaica Winehouse endures today.

The tent belonged to Pasqua Rosée, a Greek from Italy who kicked off the City’s first caffeine craze in 1652. Coffee soon took the capital by storm, explains Dr Green. Dozens of cafés sprang up, their spartan interiors as dark and primitive as the drink they sold. During the tour he produces a flask – we sample the gritty coffee of the era. It’s dire: smelling like paint and the taste: bitter and stewed.

It’s a far cry from the fuss over flavour and Fairtrade credentials today. “In the eighteenth century, the pinnacle of the slave trade, no one in their right mind would have even entertained the prospect of 'sustainable' or 'ethical' coffee production…most had some inkling of the cruelty and atrocities that common in the Jamaican plantations, but they continued to drink coffee anyway,” says Green.

Four ages of coffee culture in London

First wave – 1650 to 1860s
Coffeehouses function as crucibles for sharing information about finance, law and journalism. The coffee is unevenly roasted in pans on open fires, ground up and drunk black and sugarless.

Second wave – 1950s to 70s
Tea and the telegraph kill off coffee for nearly a hundred years, but Soho’s espresso bars bring it back. The bars are all formica tables, rock ‘n roll and teenage kicks.

Third wave – 1990s to date
With two decades presumably lost to instant coffee at home, the café as a meeting place is resurrected. Starbucks, Costa and Caffe Nero expand rapidly with their “comforting blandness”.

Fourth wave – 2005 to date
A small backlash against the weak, syrupy buckets of chain coffee. The flat white delivers velvety “microfoam”, mathematically precise coffee dosing, a hefty pricetag and a touch of caffeinated navel-gazing.

People thronged the 17^th century coffeehouses not for the drink but for the “kaleidoscope” of ideas and news within – communal tables strewn with newspapers and the chance to debate politics with strangers. Ideas such as insurance for ships and stock exchanges were born in spaces like these. “Without all these coffeehouses, it’s incredibly doubtful that Britain would have been able to build up an empire bigger than Rome,” he adds.

“Empire” is a good cue for a Starbucks critique. Their branches are even more ubiquitous than the coffeehouses of 350 years ago. There are 783 cafés in the UK, nearly half of which are in the City. “Like a barnacle of modernity it grows out of the church,” says Green, touching the wall of a Starbucks shoehorned into the back of St Stephen Walbrook. He explains the “bitter irony” of the multinational chain making a huge loss in the UK and that they are here purely for branding purposes.

When asked about the “fourth wave” of London coffee culture – with all its artisanal roasting and latte art – Green questions back disarmingly: “Would you rather have instant coffee and a really good conversation, or really good coffee and no conversation?”

He describes this wave as an “almost Epicurean obsession with the exquisite taste of the coffee” where the drink has come full circle. “Any conviviality between strangers in 'fourth-wave' coffeehouses tends to be secondary to the taste of the coffee.”

“I wonder whether it will last,” he muses, and puts today’s interest in coffee flavour and provenance down to an “obsession with the finer things in life – finer things that only a very small minority of people can afford.”

Is it time then, for a “fifth wave” of unremarkable, reasonably priced, fairly traded coffee that is nothing but lubrication for debate and the exchange of ideas?

Dr Green’s pick of six convivial coffee places (in no particular order)

The Espresso Room, Great Ormond Street, Bloomsbury WC1
Small but perfectly formed. Sitting on box-seats on the pavement is not so much trendy, but necessary. The beans are from Square Mile, roasted in London. The cups are 100 per cent compostable.

Healthy Stuff, Dalston Lane, Dalston E8
The name, and the fact that the café was started by Finnish nutritionist confers a certain degree of wholesomeness. The beans are from Climpson & Sons, roasted a mile away in Hackney.

Flat White, Berwick Street, Soho W1
A trailblazer in the London coffee revolution, or the shop to blame for latte art, depending on which way you want to look at it. Beans again are from Square Mile, with a bespoke blend of berries from small independent farms in Brazil, Sumatra and El Salvador.

The Hackney Pearl, Prince Edward Road, Hackney Wick, E9
Pearl of the East, as they say. Nice and out of the way in the semi-industrial environs of Hackney Wick. Square Mile beans strike – again.

The Idler, Westbourne Park Road, Bayswater W2
Aims to be a centre of learning (philosophy, husbandry and merriment) as well as a café, in fact, it calls itself a coffeehouse, and is perhaps the closest contender in London for a 17th century-style caffeinated place of ideas. Monmouth coffee rules here.
(See article in Eel 33 http://www.sustainweb.org/jelliedeel/articles/264/)

Towpath Café, Regents Canal Towpath, De Beauvoir Town, N1
This canalside bolthole contrasts its no-frills facilities (cash only, no takeway, no toilets) with imaginative food with consistent rave reviews. The coffee is about as boutique as it gets. The café’s Italian-American proprietor imports prized blends from a small-scale artisanal roaster in Florence.

Dr Green’s London Coffeehouse tour through the City of London is animated by actors in period dress and caffeinated with gritty period coffee. Visit www.unrealcityaudio.co.uk for the next dates.

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