Loolecondera Estate

Loolecondera Estate is the tea estate in the hills near Deltota, about 35 km south-east of Kandy, where the Scottish planter James Taylor cleared 19 acres in 1867 and planted the first tea plantation in what was then Ceylon. That field, still known as Field No. 7, is where the story of Ceylon tea begins. The estate grows tea to this day, and a few relics of Taylor's own life on it are protected as archaeological monuments.

Where is Loolecondera Estate?

The estate lies in the hills of Sri Lanka's Central Province, with Deltota as its nearest town. The old planting registers list it under the Hewahetta Lower planting district, and its slopes are usually described as lying between roughly 900 and 1,500 metres above sea level. From Kandy the usual road runs south through Galaha and Deltota, a drive of about 34 km, and the last few kilometres climb through the estate on narrow, winding roads.

What does the name Loolecondera mean?

Loolecondera is the British spelling of the Sinhala place name Loolkandura. The name is usually explained as "the stream full of loola fish", loola being the Sinhala name for the striped snakehead (Channa striata), a freshwater fish. Sinhala-language sources still call the estate Loolkandura.

How did tea come to Loolecondera?

Loolecondera began as a coffee estate: the land was bought from the Crown in 1841 to plant coffee. James Taylor, born in Kincardineshire, Scotland, in 1835, arrived in Ceylon in 1852 at the age of 17, was sent to work on the estate, and was managing it within a few years. In the late 1860s a fungal disease, coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), began to devastate the island's coffee plantations, and planters had to look for other crops.

Taylor tried cinchona, the tree whose bark yields quinine, and he tried tea. In 1867 he cleared 19 acres (7.7 hectares) of the estate and planted them with tea grown from Assam hybrid seed. That planting, Field No. 7, is recognised as the first tea plantation in Sri Lanka.

Taylor did not stop at growing the leaf. By 1872 he had a working tea factory on the estate, and in a letter he described "a machine of my own invention being made in Kandy for rolling tea". Other planters copied his methods, and over the following decades tea replaced coffee across the hill country.

What happened to James Taylor?

Taylor spent almost forty years at Loolecondera. As the tea industry grew, estates passed into the hands of larger companies, and in 1891 he was dismissed from the estate where he had planted the first tea. He died the following year, on 2 May 1892, aged 57, of severe dysentery and gastroenteritis. He is buried at Mahaiyawa Cemetery in Kandy, where his headstone remembers him as "the pioneer of the cinchona and tea enterprise in this island".

What can you see at Loolecondera today?

Loolecondera is a working tea estate rather than a visitor attraction, so expect tea fields, estate roads and a factory, not a heritage centre. Three relics of Taylor's time, the stone seat he used, his well and the remains of a tea kiln, were declared archaeological protected monuments by a government gazette notification of 6 June 2008. The stone seat, looking out over the surrounding hills, is the place most visitors come to find, along with Field No. 7 itself.

A small museum in Taylor's memory was opened on the estate in 1992, the centenary of his death. Opening arrangements are not published, so ask locally before you travel. Some of the early equipment Taylor used at Loolecondera is on display at the Ceylon Tea Museum in Hantana, just outside Kandy, which makes a good first stop on the way.

Can you walk to Loolecondera on the Pekoe Trail?

Yes. Stage 2 of the Pekoe Trail, the long-distance walking route through Sri Lanka's tea country, runs 14.7 km from Galaha to Loolkandura. According to the trail's organisers it takes about five hours with 853 m of climbing, and it passes through the upper divisions of Loolecondera Estate, James Taylor's Seat and the track to his original cottage.

How does Loolecondera fit into the story of Ceylon tea?

Everything that followed grew out of that first field. By the end of the century tea had become the island's main plantation crop, and today the Sri Lanka Tea Board recognises seven tea-growing regions: Nuwara Eliya, Dimbula, Uda Pussellawa, Uva, Kandy, Sabaragamuwa and Ruhuna. A visit to Loolecondera is a chance to stand in the field where that story began.

Which teas carry the Loolecondera name?

The Sri Lankan tea company Mlesna packs a Broken Orange Pekoe Fannings black tea under the Loolecondera name; its packs say the tea is selected from the seasonal production of Loolecondera Estate, and its cartons carry Taylor's portrait captioned "the father of Ceylon Tea". Lakpura sells it in four forms: a 200 g carton of loose tea, a foil pack of loose tea in 200 g or 500 g, a carton of tea bags and a small box of ten luxury tea bags.