The Best Places for Tea in London: Tea Rooms and Afternoon Tea

The best places for tea in London split into three kinds: tea shops that sell leaf by the tin, hotels that serve a full afternoon tea, and small independent tea rooms that do a cream tea and a good pot without the ceremony. This page covers the ones I have actually sat in, what each one is good at, and which ones have closed since I visited, because London’s tea scene turns over faster than most guides admit.

I am a serious tea drinker and London is the best city in Europe to be one in. What follows is first-hand rather than a round-up of press releases: where the tea was good, where it was not, and what it is worth booking ahead for. Every venue below was re-checked in September 2026, and the ones that have shut are named as shut rather than quietly dropped.

The best tea shops in London

A tea shop sells leaf to take home, and the two names worth walking to are below.

TWG Tea, Leicester Square

TWG Tea at 48 Leicester Square is the most serious tea counter in central London, and the wall of tins behind it is the reason to go in. TWG Tea was founded in Singapore in 2008 and has opened salons across Asia, Europe and North America since; the brand’s catalogue runs to more than 800 varieties, and the Leicester Square shop carries a very large share of them.

Loose leaf is sold in the brand’s tins and bags in the yellow boxes, and prices run from ordinary breakfast blends to rare single-estate teas sold by the gram at a level that will make you put the tin down. The useful part is that every tea has an open tin on the counter to smell from, and the staff will work through them with you rather than steering you to the till.

The first floor is a salon serving tea with cake, a full afternoon tea, or savoury dishes cooked with tea: a black tea vinaigrette, chicken roasted with a lavender-scented blend. Downstairs there is tea-infused ice cream and pastry, and at the back of the salon a small case of tea-related objects that functions as a one-room museum. There is a second, smaller TWG shop and tea room on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge if Leicester Square is too busy, which on a Saturday it will be.

Twinings, 216 Strand

Twinings at 216 Strand has been selling tea from the same address since 1706, which makes it the oldest tea shop in London and the oldest continuously operating business at one site in the city. It is long and narrow, barely more than a corridor, and there is a small museum at the back and a tasting counter partway down.

Go for the history and the tasting rather than the range, which is narrower than TWG’s. It is a five-minute walk from Covent Garden and the natural stop if you are already on the Strand.

What afternoon tea actually is

Afternoon tea and high tea began as two different meals, and almost every London hotel now uses the words interchangeably. Afternoon tea was an upper-class meal invented to bridge the long gap between lunch and a late dinner: tea with finger sandwiches, scones and small sweet things, taken in a drawing room in the middle of the afternoon.

High tea was the working-class evening meal, a hot dish with a mug of tea when people got home from work, eaten at a high dining table rather than a low drawing-room one. The upper classes later borrowed the name for the simpler meal they made themselves when the servants were off. Today most London hotels advertise afternoon tea as “high tea” because it sounds grander, so when you book a high tea in a London hotel you will be served an afternoon tea. Book the one you want by looking at the menu, not the name.

The best afternoon tea in London

The Rubens at the Palace

The Rubens at the Palace serves the best full afternoon tea I have had in London, in a salon-like room opposite the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace. The selection of savoury and sweet bites is generous, and unusually for a hotel tea the loose-leaf list is a real list rather than three bags and a decision.

I have written the visit up separately, with the room, the tiers and what arrived on each of them, so read the full Rubens at the Palace review if you are deciding between hotels.

Kingsway Hall is now Middle Eight

Kingsway Hall near Covent Garden, where I had my first London afternoon tea, no longer exists under that name. The hotel closed for a full refurbishment and reopened as Middle Eight, Covent Garden, so a booking made from an older guide will not find it.

The tea I had at the old Kingsway Hall was a disappointment: the food was fine, but the pot arrived so far ahead of the food that it had gone cool by the time the stand appeared, and the room was a large, echoing dining hall rather than a drawing room. None of that tells you anything about Middle Eight, which is a different hotel behind the same address, so treat this as a correction to the name rather than a review.

Independent tea rooms and cafés

Candella Tea Room, Kensington

Candella Tea Room on Kensington Church Street is the most charming independent tea room on this list, and it is small enough that you should book. The room is full of vintage teaware and antique furniture, and the menu covers breakfast, lunch, cream tea, traditional afternoon tea and a royal afternoon tea, plus around 50 loose-leaf teas you can order with a slice of cake.

We turned up an hour before closing without a reservation and only got in because a table was leaving, which is the argument for booking. I had the lavender Earl Grey: genuinely lavender-forward, and softer than that sounds.

The Wren Coffee, St Nicholas Cole Abbey

The Wren Coffee sits inside St Nicholas Cole Abbey, a working Christopher Wren church at 114 Queen Victoria Street in the City, and all its proceeds go to the church. It opens Monday to Friday from 7am to 4.30pm, which is a City schedule rather than a tourist one.

It is not a tea specialist and I am mentioning it for the room: pew-like benches under stained glass, a handful of plug sockets, and a quiet that nowhere else within five minutes of St Paul’s manages at lunchtime. The lemon cake is good.

Where else Londoners send you

Four more places came back repeatedly when I asked readers where they drink and buy tea in London, and they are listed below. I have not sat in all of them, so treat these as tips rather than reviews.

1. Sketch, Mayfair. The most photographed tea room in London, in a Conduit Street townhouse. The Gallery’s interior was redesigned in 2022, so pictures of the pink room are out of date.
2. Peggy Porschen, Belgravia and Chelsea. Cake first, tea second, and a pastel shopfront with a permanent queue outside it.
3. Biscuiteers, Notting Hill. An icing café attached to a biscuit shop, where you decorate your own with a pot alongside.
4. Fortnum & Mason, Piccadilly. The Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon is the formal option, and the ground-floor tea counter is where to buy leaf if you want a single address for both.

Yumchaa has closed. It was on this list for years and every one of its London tea rooms has now gone, Soho, Brick Lane and Camden Parkway included. The brand still sells its loose-leaf blends online, so if an older guide sends you to a Yumchaa shopfront, that is why you cannot find it.

National Tea Day and the FesTEAval

National Tea Day falls on 21 April every year and is the peg most London tea promotions hang on. For several years it ran a physical festival, the FesTEAval, at Tobacco Dock in Wapping, which is the event I went to.

It was laid out like a trade fair: brands with their own stands handing out samples and explaining what they were pouring, so alongside ordinary tea there was kombucha and guarana to try. Some stands ran activities, including a blind tasting and a virtual-reality piece that put you in a tea garden in Bangladesh. The stands were small and the queues were long even early in the day, and several of them had been talked up more in the run-up than they turned out to deserve. What I did get was a dozen tea brands I had never heard of and a bag of leaf to take home, which was the point.

Check before you plan a trip around it. The organisers have run National Tea Day online in recent years rather than as a festival at Tobacco Dock, so confirm on their own channels that a physical event is happening before you book flights for late April.

Where to stay on a tea trip to London

Stay in the City or Southwark for a tea trip rather than in the West End, because it puts the Strand, St Paul’s, Borough Market and Greenwich within walking or one-stop distance and costs less per night.

On our tea trip we were hosted by the Hub by Premier Inn Tower Bridge, a four-minute walk from Tower Hill and inside the City boundary. Tower Bridge, City Hall, St Paul’s and the Millennium Bridge are all walkable from it, as are Borough Market and Old Spitalfields Market.

Hub rooms are small even by London standards and very well designed for it: the bed sits high with storage underneath, a panel by the pillow controls lights and heating, and there is a pull-out desk, a large shower with both a fixed and a rain head, and enough surface by the sink to put things down. Breakfast is a choice of a few cooked and cold dishes with juice, tea and Costa coffee, charged separately or bundled into the rate. Tea and coffee are free all day in the lobby, which on a tea trip is not nothing.

Getting to London is usually a rail decision rather than a flight one if you are coming from Europe or elsewhere in Britain, and it is worth comparing train and coach fares across operators before fixing a date.

Staying connected in London

An eSIM is the simplest way to have data in London if you are arriving from outside the UK. EU roam-like-at-home no longer covers Britain, so whether your EU SIM charges you here depends entirely on your own operator, and a UK SIM bought on arrival needs a shop visit you will resent.

Set up an Airalo eSIM before you land and use the code HARRY5578 for €3 off your first one. Airalo sells day passes as well as monthly plans, which suits a long weekend, and I use the day passes as a backup even inside the EU when I expect to run past my own data allowance.

Travel insurance

Travel insurance covers what a well-planned trip cannot: a cancelled booking, a broken camera, a missed step on a Georgian staircase. Visitors from outside the UK should also know that NHS care is not free for most non-residents beyond emergency treatment, which is the main financial reason to be covered in Britain.

SafetyWing’s Nomad Insurance can be bought after a trip has already started, which is unusual among policies. They were the first travel insurer to cover Covid, and when I caught it they reimbursed everything without an argument.

Tea in London FAQ

What is the difference between afternoon tea and high tea?

Afternoon tea is the light upper-class meal of sandwiches, scones and sweets taken between lunch and dinner. High tea was the working-class hot evening meal eaten with a mug of tea. London hotels now use “high tea” to advertise afternoon tea, so read the menu rather than the name.

Do you need to book afternoon tea in London?

Book afternoon tea in London, particularly at hotels and at weekends, because the good rooms sell out days or weeks ahead. Small independent tea rooms such as Candella have very few tables and fill up too. A tea shop counter such as TWG or Twinings needs no booking.

Where can you buy loose-leaf tea in London?

TWG Tea at 48 Leicester Square has the widest range in central London, with a second shop on Brompton Road. Twinings at 216 Strand has been selling tea from the same address since 1706. Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly is the third, and the easiest to combine with a formal afternoon tea in the same building.

When is National Tea Day in the UK?

National Tea Day is 21 April. It has been marked with promotions across London tea rooms and, in earlier years, a festival at Tobacco Dock, so check the organisers’ own channels before planning a trip around a physical event.

Is afternoon tea in London worth the money?

A hotel afternoon tea in London is a meal rather than a drink, and it is priced accordingly. It is worth it once per trip if the room and the tea list are both good; a cream tea at an independent tea room gives you scones, clotted cream, jam and a proper pot for a fraction of the price.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 4 tips below come from drinking tea across London and from re-checking every venue on this page in September 2026.

1. Two of the places most tea guides still list have closed. Bea’s of Bloomsbury has gone entirely, and every Yumchaa tea room in London has shut. Kingsway Hall reopened under a new name, Middle Eight. Check a venue is open the week you go, because London’s independent tea rooms turn over constantly.
2. Book Candella, do not walk in. It is a small room in Kensington and it fills. We only got a table an hour before closing because someone else was leaving, and that is not a plan.
3. At TWG, ask to smell before you buy. Every tea on the wall has an open tin on the counter and the staff will work through them with you. Going in cold and picking by the label is how you end up with 100 g of something you do not like at a price you will remember.
4. Order a cream tea rather than a full afternoon tea if you only want the scones. A cream tea is scones, clotted cream, jam and a pot, which is the part of the meal most people actually came for, and it costs a fraction of the tiered stand.

About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the tea rooms, tea shops and afternoon teas described here come from her own trips to London, including a tea-themed trip built around National Tea Day. The team covers London for independent travellers, including the hotels, afternoon teas and tea shops worth booking, and updates this page when venues close, change hands or change name, which in this part of London is most years.