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MY origins are in southern England. For us, tea was a meal between lunch and dinner and apart from the beverage, often served with a choice of "Indian or China?", might be accompanied by bread and butter, sandwiches and the odd cake. "High tea" was something eaten by working-class people and northerners who might call their midday meal "dinner" and would probably still have the ubiquitous drink but a much more substantial hot meal.
I still remember the agony of going out to tea when I was a small child. The rule was always that one couldn't have cake until one had first eaten at least one slice of bread and butter. No children ever wanted to eat the bread and butter.
My first English job (and second after university) was in a very old-fashioned office in London. (This was in the early 1960s.) Mid-morning and mid-afternoon the tea-lady would come round with her trolley and dish out tea to everyone. In the afternoon we also got a slice of bread and butter and a biscuit (English biscuit, not American). I had a rather peculiar colleague who begged for other people's bread and butter. He then piled the slices up on a plate that he kept in his desk drawer and nibbled his way through the bread throughout the rest of the afternoon and during the morning of the subsequent day.
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