GCSE
HISTORY (8145)
Paper 2 Shaping the Nation
Resource pack for the 2023 historic environment specified site
The London Coffee Houses of the
Restoration period,
Restoration England, 1660–1685.
The purpose of this pack is to provide you with guidance and resources to support your teaching
about The London Coffee Houses of the Restoration period, the 2023 specified site for the historic
environment part of Restoration England, 1660–1685. It is intended as a guide only and you may
wish to use other sources of information about The London Coffee Houses of the Restoration period.
The resources are provided to help you develop your students’ knowledge and understanding of the
specified site. They will not be tested in the examination, as the question targets AO1 (knowledge
and understanding) and AO2 (explaining second order concepts).
AQA GCSE HISTORY (8145) Paper 2 Shaping the Nation Resource pack for the 2023 historic environment
specified site The London Coffee Houses of the Restoration period, Restoration England, 1660–1685.2023
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General guidance
The study of the historic environment will focus on a particular site in its historical context and should
examine the relationship between a specific site and the key events, features or developments of the
period. As a result, when teaching a specified site for the historic environment element, it is useful to
think about ways of linking the site to the specified content in Parts 1, 2 and/or 3 of the specification.
There is no requirement to visit the specified site as this element of the course is designed to be
classroom based.
Students will be expected to answer a question that draws on second order concepts of change,
continuity, causation and/or consequence, and to explore them in the context of the specified site and
wider events and developments of the period studied. Students should be able to identify key
features of the specified site and understand their connection to the wider historical context of the
specific historical period. Sites will also illuminate how people lived at the time, how they were
governed and their beliefs and values.
The following aspects of the site should be considered:
• location, function, and the structure
• people connected with the site e.g. the designer, originator and occupants
• the design and how the design reflects the culture, values, fashions of the people at the time
• how important events/developments from the depth study are connected to the site.
Students will be expected to understand the ways in which key features and other aspects of the site
are representative of the period studied. In order to do this, students will also need to be aware of
how the key features and other aspects of the site have changed from earlier periods. Students will
also be expected to understand how key features and other aspects may have changed or stayed the
same during the period.
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The London Coffee Houses of the Restoration period
By the late fifteenth century European traders and merchants who travelled to the Middle East and
Turkey had tried drinking coffee, which one described as, ‘black as soot, and tasting like it.’ However
early European coffee drinkers recommended it for its medicinal benefits, believing that it stimulated
the brain and could help cure illnesses such as headaches, gout, and skin complaints. Also, unlike
wine and beer, large amounts could seemingly be drunk without any ill effects.
A coffee serving jug common in the seventeenth century, and a silver coffee pot with a leather handle which was
made in London and presented to the East India Company in 1681.
The first coffee house in England was opened in Oxford in the 1650s. London soon followed when
Pasqua Rosée opened a coffee house in St. Michael's Alley, Cornhill, in 1652 (Resource D). Rosée
was the Greek servant of a merchant, Daniel Edwards of the Levant company,* who prepared coffee
for his master whenever he was in this country after returning from the Middle East. Edwards and his
friends enjoyed the taste, so he suggested that his servant open the city’s first coffee house. Edwards
funded the new business and it was an instant success, with Pasqua selling over 600 cups or bowls of
coffee a day, much to the despair of the ale houses and inn keepers of Cornhill.
*A trading company set up by Queen Elizabeth I in 1592 to trade with Turkey and the eastern
Mediterranean. It competed in the supply of coffee with the East India Company which had also been
set up by Queen Elizabeth and given further rights and powers by Charles II.
The popularity of coffee houses
By 1663 there were 82 coffee houses in the City of London (Resource A) while by the 1720s there
were probably over 500 of them in the capital, serving hot chocolate, alcohol and food as well as coffee.
It was thought that coffee encouraged thoughtfulness, sophistication and witty talk. It was also seen as
a remedy for drunkenness and violence.
Coffee houses were very popular because they provided a relaxed, social atmosphere where it only
cost a one penny for a cup of coffee (Resource B). Inside, customers could enjoy a cup of coffee,
smoke a clay pipe, read the news sheets of the day, and enter into conversation with others. A 1661
pamphlet, ‘The Character of Coffee’ celebrated the fact that coffee houses were open to all comers
and that there were no reserved seats, concluding that true equality was only to be found in the coffee
house. Not all were in favour of this, however, as in 1670, the poet and Royalist Samuel Butler criticised
coffee houses where ‘gentlemen, workmen, Lords and scoundrels mix as if they were all equal.’
Although some coffee houses had female staff or owners, many respectable women did not want to
be seen inside them. The Women’s Petition Against Coffee (1674) criticised how the ‘new-fangled and
disgusting foreign liquor called coffee ‘had turned their strong and hard-working men into weak and
babbling layabouts who wasted their time in coffee houses (Resource E). While there is a debate
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