PHILLIPS – Interested in traveling to England someday? If so, you don’t have to go outside of Franklin County to get an authentic English experience since Hunnisett Reed Antiques opened its doors 18 months ago. An English Tea Room was recently added with traditional home-baked goodies, a dozen teas and more, all served with antique settings.
Located at 53 Main Street in a charming Victorian house built in 1875 on the Weld Road and moved to the center of Phillips a decade later because its owner wanted to live in town, said its latest owner Bill Reed. Reed, with wife, Suzi Hunnisett-Reed and their two children, Kathryn, who will be a ninth-grade student at Mt. Blue High School this fall and brother Michael, a fifth-grade student at Cascade Brook School, moved here two years ago next month from Cumbria, in western England’s lake district.
After working in the antiques business for 25 years in England, the couple picked western Maine, as a place to establish an all-English antiques shop, here in New England.
“It’s beautiful here,” Reed said of the reason they picked Phillips to set up shop.
Rooms in the historic home feature high ceilings decorated with intricate wood trim and embossed tin work. Wooden floors creak with character. The big airy rooms are filled with antique English everything. Settings of porcelain, silverware and delicate linens decorate century-or-more-old sideboards, tables and chests of oak, ash, mahogany and pine that sit perfectly in each room.
Instead of searching through a dark, old barn for treasurers, antique lovers can see the possibilities of each piece better this way.
“Shoppers can see how it looks in a house,” Reed said, “to get the proportions better.” The couple is continuing renovations to their shop, which is not their home residence.
Hunnisett-Reed stood in the tall doorway to her latest venture, the Tea Room. Antique dining tables are adorned just right with English tea sets and small plates framed with silverware. From 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. She serves an authentic afternoon tea, complete with a dozen loose-leaf varieties of tea to choose from and homemade light lunch or dessert fare.
“It’s just starting to pick up, mostly by word of mouth,” she said of the Tea Room concept and added, “The reception’s been good.” A local organization has made it a regular meeting place and, unique to the experience, is the opportunity to purchase the tea cup and saucer or the complete tea set you’re using.
The couple have found that many visitors to the Tea Room have never experienced it before.
“This is the real deal; we’re doing what we would normally have,” Hunnisett-Reed said, “keeping it very English.”
Hunnisett Reed Antiques is open Wednesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Tea Room service is 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. For more visit the shop here.
The Sandy River Women’s Club meets on the first Thursday of the month at 1 pm for lunch at the Tea Room. Anyone interested please call Ellen Bibeau 639-4843 or Kate Dunham 639-2005.