Old Photograph Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms Glasgow Scotland

Old photograph of Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1878 Miss Kate Cranston opened her first tearoom, the Crown Luncheon Room, on Argyle Street, Glasgow. She set high standards of service, food quality and cleanliness, and her innovation lay in seeing the social need for something more than a restaurant or a simple " tea shop ", and in putting equal attention into providing amenities designed in the latest style. Her first tearoom was decorated in a contemporary baronial style. On 16th September 1886 she opened her Ingram Street tearoom and in 1888 commissioned George Walton to decorate a new smoking room in the Arts and Crafts style in one of her tea rooms. In 1892 she became happily married to John Cochrane, but continued to trade under the name of Miss Cranston's Tearooms. She opened new tearooms in Buchanan Street in 1897, designed by George Washington Browne, expanded to take over the whole building in Argyle Street by 1898, then completed her chain of four establishments with the Willow Tearooms by Charles Rennie MacKintosh in Sauchiehall Street, opening in 1903. While other cities offered very expensive and very basic tea rooms by 1901, Kate Cranston set the standard in Glasgow for more welcoming establishments. Rooms were provided for ladies only and for gentlemen only, as well as luncheon rooms where they could dine together and smoking rooms and billiards rooms for the gentlemen. Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms became social centres for all, for business men and apprentices, for ladies and ladies' maids. The Ladies Rooms were a particular success, newly allowing respectable women to get out and meet together without male company. Unlike cafes or tearooms in other cities, there was no intrusive supervision and those having tea had an assortment of Scones and cakes to hand, with a discreet notice reminding newcomers to remember the amount consumed.



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