Stokes Tea& Coffee

Robert William Stokes began as a grocer in 1892 and turned to tea and coffee in 1902, and the fourth generation — managing director Nick Peel — still roasts under the family name, with the flagship café occupying the Tudor building on Lincoln's High Bridge: the bridge itself dates to about 1160 and is the only medieval bridge in England still carrying buildings, which makes this arguably the most structurally interesting cup of coffee in the country. Two sister cafés — at the Lawn and in Newark — are disclosed as the family's other rooms; the beans and leaves retail from the counters and the roastery supplies the county. A hundred and twenty years and one family: Lincoln's morning, institutionalised.