Is high tea still a thing?

Interesting all the different experiences.

In my experience (in Southern England), “Afternoon tea” was dainty sandwiches, fancy cakes and scones at 4pm. Posh, and in my mind, a social meal mainly for ladies.

“High tea”, or just “tea”, was a simple, but hearty, hot meal when people came home from work at 5.30 or 6ish. Very different.

Lyons Corner Houses used to be the thing when I was a child. It was a Saturday high tea treat with mum and dad after shopping.

I've stayed in many hotels when my children were growing up and I was always offered high tea for the children, to allow for an earlier bath and bed before I went down to dinner at 8.30.
I expect that you could ask for it nowadays, whether they agree to provide it is another matter.
It might have been scrambled eggs on toast or a filled omelette or ham eggs and chips. There was always a choice but then, our family used the same hotels over the years so the staff knew us well and went the extra mile.

I think what we use to call tea ie a light evening meal like ham salad or beans on toast or sausages with a cup of tea is technically high tea. Not posh at all! Afternoon tea in china cups with dainty sandwiches and fancy cakes is posher. But a mug of tea with a digestive biscuit isn't! I think these subtleties are very complicated especially to non native English people!

High tea is usually a hot meal between 4 and 6. Used to have lovely ones on visits to Llandudno.

In Scotland when I was a child afternoon tea was the posh one which not everyone had as it consisted of scones, sandwiches and cake with tea.

High tea was the evening meal for those who like my great aunt still ate dinner at midday. It consisted of things like sausage and mash, bridies and baked beans or the like, and bread and butter to "fill up the corners".

Some people considered it very working class, but the farming community ate it too. But never in my wildest imagination did I visulize the Royal Family eating anything as ordinary, even when at Balmoral or Holyrood House.

When I worked as a waitress in the mid 70s the Restaurant I worked in served High Tea & Afternoon Tea.

Afternoon Tea is dainty sandwiches & cakes/scones

High Tea is a cooked dish/meal followed by cake

Both were served with Tea never Coffee in those days.

I go out for either a Cream Tea (Devon resident) or Afternoon Tea once a month with friends, very enjoyable

I used to love a high tea....do any gransnetters remember the Fourways at Dunblane.... that was the place to go for high tea!

I only ever heard of high tea being served in hotels. At home, it was just your tea! I don’t remember when I last saw one being offered, either in a restaurant or a hotel.

And supper but only if we had a tea time ? confused you will be.

In our family it's Breakfast, Lunch and if eating late it's Dinner, early Tea time.

I do like the idea of High Wine
Think I will adopt this Icyalittle

PS the worst cup of tea I had was in a cafe in Scotland. I was handed a paper cup full of hot water, a tea bag, and a stick to stir it.

Someone further back mentioned a woman told her she was making tea wrong. I used to work in Germany and we had a man who made our tea for us. He had a huge teapot to which he boiled water, sugar, milk and sugar together! Yuck it was horrendous but none of us wanted to offend him by saying anything.

More afternoon tea with bells on it, sodapop.

That would be afternoon tea in my book Apricity. Funny how things evolve isn't it.

In Oz "High Tea" has become quite a special event in recent years with lots of upmarket restaurants, hotels and Galleries offering High Tea. Definitely no sausages but a variety of teas, bubbly, delicious cakes and tiny savoury treats beautifully served on multi-tiered platters. All lots of fun. ???

Not in my neck of the woods

When I was young, we had a lovely book of Scottish poems, readings etc, with one of my favourites being called "An Aberdeen High Tea" which I always read, unable to stop uncontrollable laughter - I thought it was an exaggeration, but when I visited my Aberdonian aunts discovered that it was absolutely true! Love a real high tea.

We never had 'high tea', or at least we never called it that. It was just our tea and it was a cooked meal. We had our dinner in the middle of the day. At school we had school dinner, presided over by 'dinner ladies'. On Sundays we had Sunday dinner in the middle of the day. Lunch was something we'd heard of, vaguely, but was for posh people down south. We are northern from working class stock in Lancashire.

My husband's parents, also working class from the very traditional North East, never varied their eating routine:

Breakfast (cooked)
Ten o'clock (not elevenses! Coffee and a biscuit.)
Dinner at midday (meat, two veg, potatoes, yorkshires, gravy, pudding and custard)
Tea at 4pm (cakes, scones and a cup of tea)
Supper at 7.30pm (cold meat or corned beef pie and salad, bread and butter)

They never varied this, unless unavoidable, and never ate between meals. They were fit and slim! In the Northumberland village, where they lived, the place was a ghost town if you passed through at midday. Everyone was indoors sitting down to their dinner.

Tea for me is a cup of tea and cake or sandwich at about 3,30pm to bridge the gap between lunch and evening meal which we named supper which was served at 6 - 7 p.m.

Dutch friends now invite us for High Wine, instead of High (i.e. afternoon) Tea. A glass of often sparkling wine, with cheese and nibbles, followed by fresh quiche and salad, then fruit tart. I like this version!

I think the names of meals vary according to the part of the country. Growing up, we had breakfast, dinner , tea, and, once we stayed up a bit later, supper. Dinner was a two course cooked meal around 12.30 and my mum continued this until her dying day. Tea when we were little was bread and spread and cake. Supper might be a drink and a biscuit or fruit cake.
As we grew older we came home from school absolutely starving, so tea became more substantial, something on toast or a salad, followed by bread and jam and cake or tinned fruit. Never called high tea, though in our house. We were poor, not posh.
Nowadays, we have a salad or sandwich at lunch time, and a cooked main course at night, sometimes followed by a yoghurt, with a snack later on, fruit or cheese and biscuits, or just a drink.

On Sundays we revert to a traditional roast dinner at 1pm, then a cup of tea and cake at 4pm, to keep us going till 7 or 8pm when we have ham rolls( we call it Sunday supper, though DH says Sabbath rolls ).
I hate the term “supper” to mean an evening meal, as it is in the south.

....which, I suppose, means that a high tea is a special tea for a special occasion

Definition of high days and holidays: - special occasions.