Time for.....A Delicious History Tour

Hello there,

Welcome back to Tea With Me and Friends - we hope you're feeling tea-riffic today.

In this post we wanted to share a slightly different experience with you, as recently Lorna and I enjoyed a "Delicious History" tour around Fortnum and Mason in London. The tour takes you on a journey throughout the 311 year history of the store, including meeting some of the present day store employees and enjoying some delicious samples.

I'm a big fan of the food hall at Fortnums and the general shopping experience (even if a lot of the items are out of my price range) and I also love social history, so I've wanted to do this tour for a while.

 Tours take place about once a month and involve a small group being taken around the store over a period of approximately two hours. The tour is led by Fortnum's in-house historian and archivist, Dr. Andrea Tanner, who is extremely knowledgeable about the store and it's history. 

Fortnum's started as a small grocery shop in St James's Market in 1707 by William Fortnum and Hugh Mason, they built their reputation on supplying quality food, and saw rapid growth throughout the Victorian era. During its history Fortnum's has been an inventor (the Scotch egg), have been a provider to Royalty and soldiers alike, introduced Heinz baked beans to Britain and supported many British producers. Today the store sells products across various departments and prides itself on providing customers with an individual shopping experience.

The tour begins at the top of the building in the Diamond Jubliee Tee Salon and then moves down the store, spending time on each of the floors. Dr Tanner delivers the tour with humour and makes the time fly by as she tells tales from history and introduces the group to current store employees. The group also get to enjoy some delicious food and drink samples during the tour. 

Dr Tanner was happy to answer any questions that we had and we felt like to learnt a lot during the couple of hours we spent on the tour. There was also a special treat at the end of the tour, but I won't ruin the surprise!

We thoroughly enjoyed our experience and would recommend it to anyone interested in the history of this beautiful store. For more information pop by the Fortnum and Mason website.

Have you enjoyed an unusual foodie tour anywhere? We'd love to hear all about it!

Thank you for popping by today,

Rachel & Lorna