Kardomah Cafés were immensely popular from the early 1900s until the late 1960s. But they began life much earlier – in Liverpool’s Pudsey Street in 1844, set up by the grocers and tea-trading Vey Brothers.
Widespread in England and Wales and, briefly, in Paris, the chain featured live entertainment provided by string quartets.
Today, just one Kardomah survives, in Swansea, sans music.
The business was acquired in 1868 by the newly created Liverpool China and India Tea Company.
The Kardomah brand of tea was first served at the Liverpool Colonial Exhibition of 1887 and was later applied to a range of teas, coffees and, eventually, the coffee houses themselves. The brand was acquired by Trust House Forte in 1962 and sold to Cadbury/Schweppes/ Typhoo in 1971, later becoming part of Premier Brands. The brand still exists, selling such commodities as instant coffee and whitener.
The London and Manchester Kardomah Cafés were designed between 1936 and 1950 by Sir Misha Black (1910-77). He was famous for his many still-extant London black-and-red street signs (think Carnaby Street), as well as his extensive stock and property schemes for British Rail.
Liverpool’s Kardomah was patronised by the Beatles and many other Merseybeat groups of the 1960s who played in the nearby Cavern
Club. A Kardomah branch in the fictional town of Milford was created as a studio set for one of the meeting places used by Alec and Laura in the 1945 film Brief Encounter.
The last remaining Kardomah is in Portland Street, Swansea. The original branch, the Kardomah Exhibition Café & Tea Rooms, was in the High Street and moved to Castle Street in the early 1900s.
During the 1930s, it hosted the Kardomah Gang, an assembly of ‘bohemian’ poets, writers, artists and musicians. They included the likes of Dylan Thomas, poet Vernon Watkins and the painter Alfred Janes, whose canvases can be seen at the nearby Glynn Vivian Art Gallery.
The building housing that particular café was destroyed during the Second World War, when Swansea was severely blitzed in February 1941.
The last-surviving Kardomah retains its intact, original interior. Still there are the Formica-topped tables (with their distinctive black-and-white coffee-bean design), Sputnik-style coat racks, mosaic-tiled columns and dark wood panelling. It has been run by the Luporini family since 1970 and remains a beloved Swansea institution.
I recently sat down with co-owner and manager Louise Luporini after the day’s lunchtime crowd had left, leaving the bustling waitresses in their black-and- white uniforms to tidy up.
Swansea-born Louise, a former primary-school teacher, came to the Kardomah through marriage.
She and her husband, Marcus, son of the previous owners, maintain its much-valued characteristics: personal service, a seldom-changing traditional menu and sensible pricing.
Earwigging us from an adjoining table was a long-term regular customer. He butted in to tell me that he first came here as a small child and remembers being taken upstairs for a pee by his mother, as he was too young to go to the lavatory on his own. He will be 60 next year.
Secured now by ownership of the freehold, Louise and Marcus are set to take this treasured establishment far into the future.
Iechyd da!
David Wheeler is The Oldie’s gardening correspondent
