Starbucks takes over school's tuckshop

The Starbucks revolution has penetrated a traditional British bastion - the school tuckshop.

Charterhouse, the 400-year-old independent school in Godalming, Surrey, has signed a franchise agreement with the American coffee chain.

For an annual fee, the school will use Starbucks equipment and display its publicity material around the grounds.

The new cafe at Charterhouse, where fees are £20,730 a year, will be the centrepiece of a revamped "social area", said headmaster the Rev John Witheridge.

Pupils will pay 50p for a coffee, compared with £2.15 in the high street.

Traditionalists will consider it a death knell for the peculiarly English tradition of the tuckshop, which allows hungry children to supplement their school diet.

Tuckshop is 18th-century schoolboy slang. The future masters of the British Empire longed for nostalgic eating far from home and took the name "tucker" with them to the Antipodes. It comes from "tucken", to snatch. The first Victorian tuckshop at Eton was named School Stores.

They also feature in popular literature. There are references in Tom Brown's Schooldays from 1857 and J K Rowling's Harry Potter gazes hungrily at the displays of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans and Chocolate Frogs on offer at Hogwarts.