The British and tea The British population(over the age of ten) drinks about 200,000,000 cups of tea a day. That is an average of nearly 1,040 cups of tea a year for each person, Tea mostly green tea from China came to Britain in the late 1500s, but it was only for the very rich, It became cheaper about three hundred years later, when it was planted in India and later in Ceylon(Sri Lanka), People from all classes started drinking it. But some people thought that too much tea was bad for your health. So they started putting milk in it, to make it healthier!