Marilyn Strothers well remembers when the English Rose Tearoom opened in 1997 in downtown Chattanooga.
“Finally, a good cup of hot tea,” Strothers recalled Thursday, explaining that the English Rose was the first place that she and her husband, Dan Strothers, found tea they liked after the couple moved to Chattanooga 25 years ago from Canada.
“It was just culture shock that you couldn’t get proper tea down here,” she said.
The Strotherses were among those Thursday who flocked to the English Rose, which on Saturday will have its last day in business and serve its final cup of tea and its last Cornish pasty among other pub-style English lunch fare.
After 20 years at 1401 Market St. on the first floor of the former Grand Hotel across from the Chattanooga Choo Choo, the lease has expired, the landlord wasn’t willing to renew the lease, and plans fell through for a new owner to reopen the English Rose in a new location, said the tearoom’s owner, Sharon Gilley.