Petersham Bound

A small quantity of our Lord Petersham tea is leaving these shores today, heading for the US of A.

To be specific, Petersham, Massachusetts.

For the simple reason that the town, or at the least the Trustees of the Petersham Memorial Library, reached out and told us they are holding a special Library tea next February.

If there’s one thing that we have proven over and over again, it’s that libraries and tea go together like… well… libraries and tea. It should be the standard saying for “goes together like” since horses and carriages are now less prevalent.

And next year we will be taking part in History month in South Australia… with events in one or more libraries! So it all seems to dovetail.

So, where is this place, if you fancy dropping in? Only 1 hour,  26 minutes from Boston, which is handy if you’re our friend Katrina, not so handy if you are any other tea blogger we can think of.

So, what’s the link?

Petersham in MA is named after Petersham, South of London (as is Petersham NSW, but until that town starts getting excited about our tea, we’ll ignore them).

Incidentally, it either has 1,234 people in it or Wikipedia just made up a number. It looks suspicious!

So “our” Lord Petersham took his name from the (UK) town, despite the fact that he was due to inherit the Earldom of Harrington, which is nowhere near it. It appears to have been self-bestowed.

Wikipedia acknowledges that in the article on the (MA) town, but says that Charles Stanhope adopted the title in the early 18th century. While that’s technically true, other sources suggest his father, also Charles Stanhope, did it first, so more likely late 17th century.

And if you missed the endless times we’ve said it, we named the tea after him because he reportedly had a different tea canister for every day of the year. We’ve blended seven teas, one for each day of the week, because 365 would be silly.

As Lord Petersham (‘ours’, not his Dad) designed a famous hat style and a famous greatcoat, the name also lives on in the Petersham Greatcoat (the hat he named after his actual title, so it’s the Harrington Hat)

To recap: Tea. History. Libraries.

Unbeatable.

Drink up, Petershamites!