The Road To Ceylon

James Taylor's vision for Ceylon tea transformed a struggling colony into the world's most famous tea-producing nation

- by KENNY MacASKILL

The name James Taylor brings to mind the American singer rather than any Scot. There is, however, a Scottish James Taylor who's famed, but not in his native land.

James Taylor is the man who brought tea to Ceylon, and his name lives on with the industry that he helped to develop. The country is now known as Sri Lanka, but the moniker he was given as the “father of the Ceylon tea industry” remains, as does the tea that is a vital part of the nation’s economy, with the crop now forming part of the natural landscape.

Of course, in Scotland it was Thomas Lipton whose name was synonymous with the brew. The brand and the shops were prevalent not just in Scotland but across both Britain and Ireland.

Lipton, who was born in the Gorbals, Glasgow, in 1848, opened a small store from which an empire would grow – one involving not just numerous shops, but the tea brand that became so famed globally and remains on the market to this day.

The two would meet, with Lipton’s name far better remembered – though not in Sri Lanka.

James Taylor was born in 1835 on the Monboddo Estate at Auchenblae, near Laurencekirk, Kincardineshire. When his mother died and his father remarried, and not getting on with his stepmother or fancying the drudgery of life at home, he headed to London in 1851, where he decided to travel to Ceylon to work on a plantation.

When he left his native land James was just 17 years old, but that was the lot for so many then.