Crockery set from Bethesda Baptist Chapel, Narberth. This includes an earthenware cup, saucer, plate, sugar bowl and cream jug. It is in the style of what is generally termed 'Hotel Ware', designed for high volume service. These are lined in green enamel, each bearing an ornamental strapwork motif containing the words 'Bethesda Baptist Chapel, Narberth'. Only the saucer is stamped with the maker's name - 'Alfred Meakin' (of Stoke on Trent) - but it is likely that the others are by the same maker. The cup is impressed 'England'. These dates from the 1920s or 1930s. They were donated by the Reverend W Howells who was once a minister at Narberth Baptist Chapel. 

Alfred Meakin was a British company that produced tableware, tea sets and toilet ware from 1873/5 to 1976 when it became Myott-Meakin, later becoming part of the Churchill Group. Alfred died in 1904. The company operated from the Royal Albert, Victoria and Highgate Potteries in Tunstall, Staffordshire, later acquiring the Newfield Pottery and the Furlong Mill. Bethesda Baptist Chapel was first built in 1809. The present chapel, tucked in an alleyway off High Street, dates from 1889 and is now a Grade II listed building. Crockery sets have a link with the transatlantic trade in Africans and can be traced to the British fondness for tea. 

Tea rose in importance with the Temperance Movement in the 19th century and items such as this show the importance of tea and cocoa in the anti-alcohol stance. In 1882 tea-loving Prime Minister William Gladstone told Parliament “The domestic use of tea as a powerful champion able to encounter alcoholic drink in a fair field and throw it a fair fight.” The Dutch started to import tea in the 16th century – it spread from there to western Europe but remained a drink for the wealthy. Catherine of Braganza, wife of Charles II, made it fashionable in the UK. The East India Company seized on this and began to import tea into Britain, shipping it from Java. 

The East India Company (founded in 1600 and who had begun using and transporting enslaved people in Asia and the Atlantic in the early 1600s) had the monopoly on all trade from the East. When tea came into Britain, their ships transported it and by the 18th century tea had replaced spices and silk as their most important cargo. By 1760 they were carrying 4.5 million tons a year into Britain. It had a high tax due in part to smuggling and tea was often adulterated with substances such as sheep dung to give it the necessary colour. William Pitt the Younger reduced the tax on tea in the 1784 Commutation Act, acting on advice of Richard Twining of Twining’s Tea Company (who were importing through the East India Company who had gained control of large parts of the Indian sub-continent where they initiated the beginnings of the British Raj and Hong Kong) making legal tea affordable. The trade in tea helped to strengthen and promote British Imperialism in Asia. 

Increase in popularity was also in a major part to sugar. Increase in sugar consumption led to more tea and increased the enslavement of African people multi-fold in the West Indies. By 1760s the annual duties on sugar imports were enough to maintain all the ships in the navy – a navy that helped to secure British dominance overseas. So, the increase of trading in enslaved people grew. Due to the increase in plantation agriculture, tea drinking also changed the economy and ecology of areas of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka).