James Taylor & Loolecondera

James Taylor came from Laurencekirk in Kincardineshire, Scotland. A University of Exeter history describes him as one of a network of 14 Scottish gardeners from that parish who went to Ceylon during the coffee years. The Sri Lanka Tea Board's Ceylon Tea history records that he arrived in 1852 and settled at Loolecondera Estate, Galaha, in the Hewaheta countryside near Kandy. Loolecondera was then a coffee plantation, and Taylor was its superintendent.

The Tea Board notes that he left the district only once, to study tea cultivation in Darjeeling, and that he spent the rest of his life in the Kandyan hills. It quotes a letter he wrote home to Scotland: "You may think I write too much about the scenery."

Taylor was not the first to try tea in Ceylon. The Tea Board records evidence that tea plants imported from China were tried as early as 1824, and that Maurice Worms later planted China seedlings on estates in Pussellawa and Ramboda. Worms made tea from his crop, but it cost too much to compete.

Taylor began by planting tea along the margins of the divisional roads on his coffee estate. He withered his first leaves on the veranda of his bungalow, following the process used by tea planters in Assam. In 1867 he began a 19-acre tea plantation at Loolecondera. The University of Exeter history describes this as the first commercial tea planting on the island, and the Tea Board dates the first commercial plantation to the same year.

In 1872 a fully equipped tea factory began operating on Loolecondera Estate. The University of Exeter history adds that Taylor designed the machinery for rolling the leaf himself, and that by 1875 the estate had 100 acres of tea.

In 1873, according to the Tea Board's history, twenty-three pounds of tea made by Taylor reached London. The Tea Board describes this as the international debut of Ceylon Tea. The Exeter history dates the first shipment to the London tea auction to 1875. The quantities were small. The Tea Board notes that the Sirocco tea dryer of 1877 and the tea-rolling machine of 1880 then made commercial tea production viable.

Coffee rust appeared in Ceylon in 1869 and destroyed the coffee plantations over the following years. Planters from all over the hill country then visited Loolecondera to learn how to grow and manufacture tea. The Tea Board records that by the late 1880s almost all the coffee plantations had been converted to tea, and that more than 120,000 hectares had to be stripped of coffee bushes and replanted.

The first public Colombo tea auction was held in 1883. By 1899 nearly 400,000 acres of land were under tea. James Taylor died in 1892 at the age of 57. The Tea Board calls him the pioneer of the tea industry in Ceylon, and records that he was buried among the Kandyan hills.

Tea is still grown in the hills around Kandy. The Sri Lanka Tea Board divides the tea country into seven districts, each known for teas of a particular character. Kandy is one of them. Its estates are spread over the hills at Nilambe, Hantane, Pussellawa, Gampola and Hewaheta, the area where Loolecondera lies. Kandy teas are described as mid-grown, cultivated between 650 and 1,300 metres.

The Tea Research Institute was set up in 1925. The Tea Board trademarked the Lion logo for Ceylon Tea in 1999, and a Tea Museum was set up in an old tea factory at Hanthana, Kandy, in 2001. The year 2017 marked 150 years since Taylor established his plantation at Loolecondera.