Sally Lunn’s is a teashop in Bath. It sits in a lane by the abbey, and the Roman baths. Paganism and Christianity jostle here: Minerva battles Christ, who wins, for now. Sally Lunn’s calls itself ‘the oldest house in Bath’ (c. 1482). It is rough-hewn, with a vast teal window and pumpkins on display. The pumpkins might be plastic. I don’t know. Tourists queue in the hallway behind a large wooden cutout of a woman who might be Sally Lunn. She is a semi-mythical woman: the Huguenot refugee Solange Luyon, who came to Bath in the 1680s with brioche in her hands. No one knows if she really existed.
At the end, the table is littered with uneaten body parts and Sally Lunn buns
I am fond of Sally Lunn’s, because my cousin brought me here in 1982, and I ate a teacake – a Sally Lunn bun is just a large teacake – as big as my head.

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