On 1 April 1942, high above South Molton Street, the sound of a small roaster filled a cramped attic. London was still in the grip of war. Blackouts fell each night, sirens wailed, and yet in that attic, Harold Rees Higgins was roasting coffee. He believed that even in the darkest days, there should be room for something exceptional. He called his business H.R.Higgins (Coffee-man).
It was not easy. Atop of five flights of narrow stairs,Harold himself lived among the sacks of green coffee for most of the week, determined to make his vision work. As his son Tony recalls:
“At its beginning H.R.Higgins (Coffee-man) had to be wholesale only because, as my father says in his diary, you couldn’t expect retail customers to climb up five flights of stairs.”
Two years later, Tony climbed those same stairs himself:
“When I was six, I climbed those same stairs and caught the enticing aroma of freshly roasting coffee. If you visit us at 79 Duke Street you can see a record of that early encounter.”
Life in that attic was far from simple:
“My father worked and lived for most of the week in that attic to get his fledgling business established, coping as so many did with the hazards of air raids.”
That memory — the smell of roasting coffee in an attic during the Blitz — still lingers in everything we do. It is part of our story, passed down like the blends themselves.
Later, it was Tony himself who introduced Vienna Blend. He wanted to capture the elegance and balance of the great European coffee houses, and he did so with a medium roast that remains as graceful today as when it was first conceived. Notes of honey, pear and milk chocolate give Vienna a soft richness, a reminder that refinement never goes out of fashion. It became a favourite of many loyal customers — including the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who enjoyed Vienna most of all.
And decades later, Harold’s grandson David created 1942 Blend as a tribute to that attic beginning. He imagined the kind of coffee Harold himself might have poured at the end of a long day — balanced and comforting, with soft caramel sweetness, fruit brightness, and a richness that speaks to tradition. It quickly became one of our most-loved coffees, a bridge between past and present.
Today, our shop on Duke Street stands just a short walk from where it all began. The stairs are easier to climb, the world outside a little steadier, but the essence remains the same. International Coffee Day gives us a reason to pause and look back — not out of nostalgia, but as a reminder of what coffee has carried us through, and what it continues to mean.
Because coffee is never just coffee. It is memory. It is resilience. It is a story passed from one generation to the next, poured into every cup we share.
