Two steps into the Nevin Square storefront on Winter Street and you might think you’ve entered Queen Victoria’s pantry: Nottingham lace coasters; velvet tea cozies in deep shades of crimson and royal blue; and cream-colored shelves of porcelain teapots. They surround a countertop lined with airtight glass jugs of English teas.

“I’m not a very modern person,” says Alison David, who, with her husband Christopher Bird, crossed the pond from Bristol, England, this spring to open the Island’s only old-fashioned British tea parlor, The English Butler. We’re seated snugly around one of the three window-front tables, sipping English Breakfast – piping hot, of course – from flowered tea cups.

The concept behind the store is more philosophical than commercial. The couple took a two-week tour of the East Coast (including Martha’s Vineyard) in October of 2003. Not once on this tour were they ever served a “proper cup of tea.” Tea should be sipped from china or pottery. Cream (or, rather, milk) should pour from a pitcher and sugar be spooned from a bowl.

“We’re not enamored of the to-go culture, where, if you order a cup of tea, they fill a styrene cup with tepid water – rush, rush, rush,” Alison says. Urgency is not what tea-drinking is about and not, they believe, what the Vineyard is about.

“The Vineyard is supposed to be about taking your time, relaxing, breathing, being free. And the ritual of making tea is very much like that. When you start to make a pot of tea for yourself, you relax; that makes you feel good, feel special. The whole ritual is something that people get hooked on very quickly.”

Alison and Chris’s account of the beginning of The English Butler captures Island life in all its quintessential quirkiness: a by-chance meeting of two families during a four-hour wait in the Island’s “infamous ferry queue” in the early fall of 2003. While Alison and Chris were in line, a large van with a pile of kids hanging off the roof pulled up next to them. Tracy Powell and her family were heading back to Rochester, New York. Tracy and Alison  struck up a conversation about the Island’s tea crisis, and though they parted ways at Woods Hole, Tracy sent Alison a Christmas card later that year. She had spread the tea-shop idea to her friends and wanted Alison and Chris, back home in Bristol, to follow through.

Within the year Alison and Chris were seeking a place to set up shop on-Island, but after searching for two weeks, they were losing hope. On their last day here they stumbled upon the former home of Under the Blue Moon art gallery. Tucked cozily away from the bustle of Main and Water streets, all nooks and angles, it was perfect.

“Our intention never really was as a business option,” Alison says. There is a rack filled with vintage English postcards. Chris cranks the arm of a gramophone, and the tinny sound of 1920s vinyl crackles from a broad brass horn. “We wanted to spend some time on Martha’s Vineyard,” Alison says, “and we tried to figure out a way to do that efficiently, in a way that would help us become part of the community, rather than being on holiday here and being tolerated as visitors.”

Visitors who’ve stopped by the tea shop tell Alison and Chris that three tables won’t be enough. Indeed, when word gets around that The English Butler serves not only a variety of estate and bespoke teas (including a flavor dubbed Vineyard Blend, a base of black Ceylon tea mixed with vanilla and hedgerow) in high-tea fashion, but also Biga Bakery scones, clotted cream, preserves, curds, Walker’s shortbread, and Cadbury’s chocolate fingers, guests may have to take their tea and sweets, rather untraditionally, on the teahouse stoop.  

And even though on-the-go isn’t their preference, the reality of the summer rush – the pressure of the ferry schedule especially – has convinced Alison and Chris to make up “afternoon tea kits,” which may be enjoyed in the car, at your guest house, or if the stoop sounds appealing, in the company of The English Butler himself: Dobson, the life-size, penguin-suited servant who stands dutifully outside the store, holding a proverbial silver platter. Imported from Las Vegas – I’d guessed England, but there you go – he’s already become the hottest photo-op in town.