Sunderland's Elephant Tea Rooms and remembering the past
To say I'm honoured, humbled and proud to be writing this blog post hardly covers the emotions I feel inside. I've been asked to give a talk on my Ryhope-set novels at the newly renovated Elephant Tea Rooms in Sunderland. Now, the Elephant Tea Rooms in Sunderland are something of a magical building. And I have to admit, I don't know a great deal about the place. But I'm dying to find out. I say it's a magical building because the building has stone elephants around the highly decorative facade. The Elephant Tea Rooms were built between 1872-1877 by Henry Hopper and designed by Frank Caws. In its day, the business was credited with controlling one of the largest retail tea, coffee and grocery trades in the whole North East of England. And now it's going to be reopened as Sunderland's Local History Library. I could not be more chuffed about this as I spend a great deal of time researching for my books in the old local studies centre, which is mov...
