Imperial Teasof Lincoln

The Poole family has sold tea and coffee from Steep Hill since 1991 by the shop's own count, from premises worth the climb in their own right — the Norman House, one of England's oldest surviving town houses, its twelfth-century stonework now scented permanently with four hundred-odd varieties of leaf and bean. The coffee roasts in-house, the teas include the shop's own blends down to its own Earl Grey, and the company register reads Poole across two generations, Darren joined lately by Indigo and Violet. Steep Hill has been named among Britain's great streets; this shop is a load-bearing reason, aromatically speaking.