The Story of ASHBYS OF LONDON
I. Idol Lane, City of London
The story of ASHBYS begins where the tea trade itself converged — in the narrow lanes between Tower Hill and the river Thames.
The earliest independent record of the firm comes from Illustrated London and its Representatives of Commerce, a commercial directory published in 1893 by The London Printing and Engraving Co. The entry reads:
“James Ashby & Sons attracts our attention as one of the leading concerns in the London wholesale tea trade. The business was founded in 1856…”
The firm’s address was 7 and 8, Idol Lane, Great Tower Street, E.C. — a stone’s throw from St Katharine Docks, where tea clippers and cargo vessels discharged their freight of Indian, Ceylonese, and Chinese teas. Surviving trade invoices from 1899 and 1900 confirm that the company was active in the wholesale tea business at this address through the turn of the century.
A note on dates: ASHBYS brand materials have historically cited 1850 as the founding year. The 1893 directory — in which businesses typically supplied their own descriptions — states 1856. The discrepancy may reflect the difference between James Ashby’s personal entry into the tea trade and the formal establishment of the firm. We present both dates transparently, and regard the 1893 record as the strongest surviving primary source.
II. Rose Brand, Embassy Tea, and the Ghostsigns of Southwark
James Ashby & Sons was not simply a middleman. The firm developed its own branded products. Among them were Rose Brand Fine Teas and Embassy Tea & Coffee — names that survive today only as painted letters on London brick.
At 195–205 Union Street in Southwark, a ghostsign — a faded advertisement painted directly onto the building wall — still bears the words: ROSE BRAND FINE TEAS. JAMES ASHBY & SONS LTD. EMBASSY TEA & COFFEE. Documented by the History of Advertising Trust (Reference: HAT60/2) and featured on the Ghostsigns project, in Londonist, Eye Magazine, and Spitalfields Life, this sign is one of London’s recognised pieces of commercial heritage.
The firm also held a patent filed in 1978 for a coffee substitute made from barley, chicory, fig, and soya — a response to the global coffee price crisis of that era. Whether this product reached the market is unconfirmed, but the patent itself demonstrates that the company remained active and innovative well into the late twentieth century.
Records from the Victory Tea Company of Kidderminster — a meticulously documented small tea retailer whose archive is preserved by the Kidderminster & District Archaeological & Historical Society — show that James Ashby & Sons was the company’s largest tea supplier in 1940, during the wartime rationing period. This confirms the firm’s role as a major wholesale tea supplier operating across Britain during the Second World War.
III. Keith Spicer Ltd. — The Blenders
Today, ASHBYS OF LONDON teas are blended and packed in England by Keith Spicer Ltd., based in Wimborne, Dorset.
Keith Spicer’s own origin story begins in 1934, when a twenty-four-year-old man named Keith Spicer began blending tea in the parlour of his family home in Bournemouth. His entire distribution fleet was a single, well-used butcher’s bicycle. From that modest start, the company grew over nine decades into one of the United Kingdom’s leading specialist tea blending and packing operations.
The company is registered at Companies House under number 00348565, with a formal incorporation date of 1939. Its head office is at 5 Cobham Road, Ferndown Industrial Estate, Wimborne, Dorset, BH21 7PN. Its manufacturing facility, located in Newcastle, produces black tea, green tea, specialty blends, and fruit and herbal infusions. Keith Spicer Ltd. is a member of the UK Tea & Infusions Association and works with Fairtrade-certified farming partners.
In 2010, Keith Spicer Ltd. was acquired by Harris Tea, a division of the Harris Jayanti Group. Under this ownership, the company continues to supply private label and branded teas to major UK supermarkets and international markets.
The precise history of how the ASHBYS brand name passed from James Ashby & Sons to Keith Spicer Ltd. has not been established from public records. What is clear is that both entities share a lineage rooted in the same craft: the art of selecting, tasting, and blending teas from the world’s great growing regions into something distinctly British.
IV. ASHBYS in Japan
In Japan, ASHBYS OF LONDON is imported, processed, and sold by SARATNA INC., based in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture.
SARATNA’s founder brings over thirty years of professional experience in food — from baking and patisserie to the world of fine tea. As a certified tea taster and tea blender, he has travelled to tea gardens across Sri Lanka, India, and other producing countries, evaluating not only the leaf in the cup but the soil, the altitude, the climate, and the hands that shaped it.
The teas are blended in England by Keith Spicer Ltd. and imported into Japan, where SARATNA handles final processing and distribution. ASHBYS teas are available for both individual consumers and trade customers, including cafés, restaurants, and hotels.
We do not ask you to trust a story. We ask you to trust the cup.