Flaming Nora: Sunderland's Elephant Tea Rooms and remembering the past

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

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 moving to the new building this week.

My talk on my novels was due to take place early February 2020 however the opening of the building has been delayed a little and I'll announce as soon as I have a new date. I'll have some books with me if you'd like to buy one and I'll happily sign them for you too.

As the first author to be giving a talk at the Elephant Tea Rooms, well, as I said at the start of this blog post, I haven't quite got the words to say how absolutely chuffed this makes me feel.

You can view the full line-up for the launch of the Elephant Tea Rooms here.