The Essex Rose Tea House and The Co-Op together occupy a building which was once a prosperous merchant’s house dating from c.1520. The building which is over five hundred years old, listed and mentioned frequently in historic surveys and reports, The Essex Rose at Dedham is a fine timber-framed building looking out across Royal Square and towards the church. The church itself is interesting and rather grand.

The Essex Rose has served many diverse purposes over the centuries, from c.1900 until it closed on the outbreak of war in 1939 it was Major Ray’s Bazaar, a business founded in 1810, selling domestic ironmongery and a wide range of other merchandise. In the front room on the first floor there is a rare and beautiful seventeenth-century plaster ceiling.

The building first found fame as a tea house more than half a century ago when Miss Loe began to cater for the tourists that were flocking to the area. Mary Loe is who gave it its present name, though she would have chosen to call it the Suffolk Rose if it had not been outside the county.

One cannot mention The Essex Rose without also speaking of Del Bower. Del, a wonderful, larger-than-life character made the Essex Rose into something very special after he and Peggy Bower bought the business in 1971. Not only was it emphatically his tea house, but it was also his home for many years. Del retired in 2000 and was delighted to sell the business to Wilkin & Sons Limited of Tiptree, who have faithfully upheld the traditional essence of the establishment, maintaining the tea room's classic charm and preserving much of its original architectural integrity.

Dedham is on the edge of Constable Country and there is a delightful walk through the fields on the far side of the river to Flatford Mill, replicated in Constable’s famous painting.