Yorkshire consumes fewer cuppas than anywhere else in Britain

It might be the home of British tea but Yorkshire folk are no longer enjoying their brew

Its tea maybe legendary, not just in the UK but around the world, but Yorkshire consumes fewer cuppas than anywhere else in Britain, new research has revealed.

While Yorkshire tea is revered as the best British cuppa available and the county’s ‘char’ is celebrated as far away as America, Australia and Africa, a new study by Limelite, reveals that fewer cups of tea are actually consumed in Yorkshire than the UK average.

The average British adult consumes three cups of tea per day, according to the study of 3,000 people by Limelite. But in Yorkshire, the average number of cuppas enjoyed each day is just 2.6 – even the Scottish drink more of the quintessentially English drink on a daily basis – 2.8 cups per day.

Geordies and others who reside in the North-East around Newcastle, Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Durham are kings when it comes to tea consumption – necking an average of 3.8 cuppas every day.

The fact that people living in Yorkshire seem the least keen on a traditional British cuppa may have something to do with the state of their kettles.

Kettles in Yorkshire are the most likely to be 10 years old or more. Almost half of all Yorkshire residents (49%) admit they have never cleaned their kettle with a limescale remover or any other cleaning method. Of those living in London and the south-east, a notorious hard-water area, more than a third (34%) of householders clean their kettle at least every two months and the average age of kettles is less than two years for more than half (52%) of the population.

“The taste of softer water in the north of the country is reckoned by most to be the best for tea-making,” said LimeLite spokesman Stuart Yates.

“Lots of northerners who have relocated to the South complain that the water tastes so bad there that they have to buy bottled, even just to make a decent cup of tea.

“But the age and the state of a kettle can influence the taste of a cup of tea. It is no coincidence that, despite being the home of the British cuppa, Yorkshire residents drink the least tea and have the oldest and least cleaned kettles in the UK.”