Miles Tea& Coffee

Henry Miles began trading tea in 1888; his grandson Derek brought the buying and blending down to Porlock in the 1960s with his partner Norman Halls, whose son John runs the firm today — well over a century of it family-held, never sold to anyone bigger. The coffee is still roasted daily in small batches at Vale Yard, where the shop sells the results over the counter; the tea is blended and packed along the coast at Minehead, and a tearoom trades under the Mr Miles name. About twenty-five people work the whole operation — the scale, like the ownership, deliberately unchanged.