Actress Wendy Craig well remembers the door-to-door tea deliveries during her childhood in County Durham.

But she was surprised to discover that these home deliveries continue today - and the same Byker-based company, Ringtons, is still taking tea directly to people's homes around the world.

The star of Butterflies and Nanny took time off from filming the popular ITV1 hospital series The Royal - in which she plays the starchy matron in the 1960s-set series - to film the latest documentary in five's Disappearing Britain series.

Her episode looks at the Great British Cuppa and took Craig back to her home village of Sacriston to the house where she was born.

She remembers the tea van delivering every week. "I was a little girl and Ringtons Tea was delivered to the door by a man in a horse-drawn van," she recalls.

"I remember so clearly, he used to come once a week with fresh tea. My mother used to go out and buy it, and have a little chat with the man. I used to feed sugar lumps to the horse."

Craig, who still has cousins living in the North-East, tries to visit the place where she grew up whenever she's working in the region, as she did a few years ago for a TV documentary about Durham Cathedral. She's also appeared on stage at Newcastle Theatre Royal.

She visited Ringtons base in Byker for the documentary, which features archive film from the 1930s to 1960s. This includes unseen film from the company's own film archive. Ringtons, established nearly 100 years ago by Samuel Smith, figures strongly in the history of tea on the Tyne.

They made films about their work for 40 years, filming the way tea arrived on the Tyne, how it was processed and packaged, and how staff used to be taken to Scarborough on days out.

"The Ringtons story was very interesting. The people who run it are actually called Smith. There are three brothers and they were pleased to talk about tea. It's lovely to know they're still thriving," Craig says.

"It was wonderful to go to Newcastle again. I remember that was the town where my mother used to take me to the theatre, and we used to go and buy my school clothes from Bainbridge's."

She was surprised to learn that home tea delivery still goes on, only to discover when she returned to the set of The Royal to hear from a first assistant director that his mother has tea delivered. "I think people are very faithful to it. If their parents had it delivered, they do too," she adds.

Craig went to a tea tasting at Twinings, where she had a special blend - the Wendy Blend - created for her, to celebrate the company's 300th anniversary.

So it's just as well she enjoys a nice cup of tea, preferring it to coffee. "I like a good strong English Breakfast tea, but in the afternoon Earl Grey or Lady Grey. And I do drink camomile and mint tea at night as ordinary tea keeps me awake," she says.

Craig was speaking from the Bradford set of The Royal, where she'll have been working for much of the past five years come March. "You take something on and hope it's a success," she says. "It gets very good figures. Matron is still stomping around."

The series is filmed in a real hospital in Bradford so she's experienced reaction to the series first-hand from professionals. "I get an awful lot of them saying they wish there were still matrons, someone who will be prepared to take full responsibility," she says.

Filming finishes just before Christmas, after which she plans to have a break, partly because she's planning on moving house. "I'm thinking of downsizing. I've lived in my house for 37 years so I don't want to be working when I'm packing and moving," she says.

Shooting The Royal in Yorkshire occupies her seven months of the year. The tea documentary, on the other hand, only took about six days filming and one day's sound dubbing.

Craig is happy to talk about tea and the programme but that interest doesn't extend to seeing the finished product. "I won't be watching, I never watch myself," she says.

* Disappearing Britain: The British Cuppa With Wendy Craig is on five on Monday at 9pm.