Today cafés serving coffee are back with a vengeance - not too different from the old days except the quality of the product has improved.
It was in the 17th century that coffee was first introduced to Britain and within a decade of the first coffee house opening in London in 1652 there were another 83 in the city alone.
Peter Brown of Fairfax House in York and Hazel Forsyth of the Museum of London explain why women were excluded as customers.
