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Barrow's Chundah Tea?

M

maillemann

New Member
Greetings everyone. I have been trying to discover what sort of tea was sold by Barrow's Stores in 1900-1911 (or thereabouts), specifically the nature of their "celebrated Chudnah Tea." I assume this is a house blend of some sort, but can anyone provide more details, or sources for adverts or catalogues describing it (or others of their teas)? Looking around the web brought me to this thread, which is how I found these forums.

The British Newspaper Archive yields adverts for it in the Birmingham Mail from 1896, but for some reason I can't register my account so can only read the preview: "THE CELEBRATED Chundah Tea. 1s. 7d. per lb., SOLD ONLY AT Barrow Stores. 74. 76, AND 78, CORPORATION STREET."

I see that there is a Chundah Valley in Pakistan, but find no reference to tea from the region. Any help is appreciated!
 
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There are a number of adverts for the tea. Most just say it is from Barrows and is strong and refreshing. this one for the Birmingham Gazette 3.3.1927 does say something about the blend. Chundah seems to be a town in India, and is also the name of the Queen mother of Lahore, who fled to Nepal for some reason in the mid 1800s.
Birm Gazette 3.3.1927. Chudnah tea.jpg
 
Welcome to the Forum, Maillemann. Haven't found much info so far, but this is what they were selling.

Maurice :-)

Chundah_Barrows.jpg
 
Mike,

It sounds as if it is just their own brand for which they probably created the name.

Maurice
 
I agree, but probably taking a name that had been in the news and would be recognised
 
Mike,

Not necessarily. I remember a guy from Hinari (electrical appliance makers) coming on TV when I lived in the UK and telling everyone that it was a totally made-up Japanese-sounding name because everyone trusts the Japanese and they were totally British but at the bottom end of the market pricewise. They actually make quite good appliances.

A Greek friend of mine here in Crete has a linen business called Nef-Nef. I asked him what the name meant and he said "Absolutely nothing, we made it up".

It's obviously not a national name, because the tea is a blend of teas from Assam, Darjeeling, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), but we may never know!

Maurice
 
Barrows Stores of Corporation St, in the advert for chundah tea, give the impression that they were in business since 1824. On another advert it shows that the Warehouse was at 93, Bull St.

Searching for the history of N°93 Bull Street shows that the firm was also known as Barrows and Co and even earlier, around 1851, as RC Barrows and Co. (this could be RB)

Some time shortly before 1850 they had taken over the business at 93 from John Cadbury, and promised to keep up the standard. Wiki states that in 1850 the Cadbury Bros pulled out of the retail business, leaving it in the hands of John’s son, Richard Barrow Cadbury. (Barrow’s remaining a leading store in Birmingham until the 1960s)

Going back to 1826 there is R. Cadbury and Son, 93 Bull St. So it may be assumed this was Richard Tapper Cadbury and later his son John Cadbury. Wikipedia says that in 1824 R. Cadbury financed John Cadbury to start a tea and coffee business next door. (In 1846 Smith and Mathews took over the drapery business at 92, Bull St.)

The Warehouse, around 1850, contained Coffee, Cocoa, Tea, Sugars, fruits and spices. The coffee is advertised as plantation from Jamaica and cocoa from Trinidad nuts. There are black teas described as fine CONGOU, rich and strong (from China) and also lapsang souchong . Green teas as TWANKAY.
 
Thank you everyone! I wasn't expecting such immediate and resounding aid! Mikejee, that advert is precisely what I was hoping for. I assumed it was a house blend, but of what I wasn't sure.

And thank you for the welcome. I am actually in the US, and though having traveled through a fair amount of England I've somehow not yet been to Birmingham despite having visited much of its environs. I became interested in this topic while writing a post celebrating J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday. Some of us have been pondering the nature of the tea Tolkien may have preferred, and finding that he frequented Barrow's we can at least assume he was exposed to this Chundah. What we may have specifically favoured I suppose we may never know!
 
Pedrocut, I was interested to see that you mentioned the word TWANKAY in your post #9. I immediately thought of Widow Twankey from the panto Aladdin. Apparently, his/her name was spelled Twankay originally so presumably it came from the green tea that you mention as the story is sometimes set in China (sometimes Arabia and sometimes Persia). As the story was first heard in the early 1700's I would think this is when tea drinking began in a big way.
 
I worked in Barrows in Birmingham, in the Greengrocery department. That would be in the late fifties, when I had just left school. We used to have a lady come in from Streetly, when we would find her a chair, and she would order her delivery. "A qtr of tomatoes, half a cucumber, a small lettuce, and a punnet of your English strawberries, a pot of clotted cream and can I have it delivered to Roman Road, in Streetly before 4pm today". This we were all sure, was so the neighbours would see the BARROWS STORES van pull up outside. Having said that, I loved my time there.
 
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