A few thoughts on a fairly local and relatively small, independent family brewery who are well known to cask beer drinkers throughout the country for one of their beers, whilst closer to home they have once again been selling off some of their pubs....
As regular readers of this blog may recall, I was conducting some field research in Leeds the other week, and in the resultant write-up I referred to the Town Hall Tavern on Westgate which has been run by Taylors Brewery for the past few years as their pied-a-terre in the city, but as I noted it was closed and up for sale when I walked past.
Coincidentally, I had also recently picked up a copy of Alesman, the excellent magazine produced by Keighley & Craven CAMRA in which there was an interesting article by the editor on Taylors, whose brewery is of course situated in the town. In it it was mentioned that not only was the Town Hall Tavern up for sale, but also Taylors' only pub in Harrogate, the Inn at Cheltenham Parade, plus two of their last few pubs in Keighley town centre, the Royal and the Albert, the last two having already disappeared from the pubs list on the company's website when I checked the other day. The sale of these last two would leave them in their home town with just the excellent and lively locals' pub, the Boltmakers Arms, and the extremely anodyne Taylors on the Green, which the brewery fashioned as their flagship a few years ago when they acquired the former Admiral Lord Rodney which in its heyday had been a popular Tetleys pub.
The article lamented the succession of Taylors pubs that had disappeared from Keighley town centre over the past 40-odd years, since the author had moved to the town. These were all pubs which I had visited at some point, and some of which I will refer to further on. But first a bit of background. Where did the Taylors story all begin?
Timothy Taylor and Co started brewing in 1858 at a site in Cook Lane, brewing mild, bitter, and porter. They were one of several breweries in the town at that time but are the only one that has survived until today. Taylors beers soon became popular with the people of the town and within a year the company were able to acquire their first tied houses, starting with the Volunteer Arms in the town centre, followed by the New Inn at Bocking. Demand continued to grow, meaning the brewery needed more room for extra capacity, and this saw them moving to a site at Knowle Spring in 1863, where they have remained ever since. Despite some setbacks and threats to their existence over the years, the company has continued to grow, with beers now sold all over the country. Quality was always the watchword, Timothy and his successors insisting that in order to be able to compete with other larger breweries, only the best ingredients would do. This has led to an assumption that the company's beers can be more expensive than other beers on the bar (often referred to colloquially as the Taylor tax), although the prices can be very low when they pop up in places like Wetherspoons or other chain pubs, where as a trade-off the beers may not be as well-maintained. Whilst there have been some moves into keg beers such as Hopical Storm, cask is by far and away the biggest format that Taylors produce.
The beer that has helped to drive the brewery's growth and has a significant proportion of the company's sales is Landlord, a 4.3% bitter. The beer, which has citrus peel aromas, a grassy freshness, marmalade sweetness, and a bitter finish, started life as a bottled beer originally called Competition Ale, becoming Landlord after the name was chosen as winner in a competition in 1953. It was first brewed as a cask beer in the 1960's, when it was stronger than it is now - I can remember it being 4.7% when I first came across it in the 1970's. The beer's reputation grew when it began to pick up scores of awards and is the only beer to have ever won CAMRA Champion Beer of Great Britain 4 times. It got a significant boost when no less a figure than Madonna said that it was her favourite beer in a TV interviews with Jonathan Ross and Michael Parkinson. A national brand was born and today it is firmly established in the top 5 cask beers in the country.
Back in the 1970's and 1980's, with the local real ale scene around Halifax and Calderdale largely restricted to Websters and Tetleys - with some notable exceptions such as a pocket of three Taylors pubs on the hills above Hebden Bridge - Keighley, the home of a different brewery, was quite an attraction for us, and from time to time we would visit the town and surrounding villages like Haworth and Oakworth to sample the pubs and their beers. At one point in the early days when I was living in Leeds I even managed to get on a trip from the Eagle Tavern to go round the brewery, although it is a visit which to be honest I can only vaguely remember! Keighley town centre back in those days had plenty of Taylors pubs to go at, with the brewery having a virtual monopoly save for the odd pub from the likes of Websters and Tetleys. There was also the attraction of the Keighley and Worth Valley heritage railway which connects Oxenhope, Haworth, and several of the villages along the attractive Worth Valley to the national rail network at Keighley and which offered a real ale on many journeys, often from Taylors. Back then, if I remember correctly, the beer would be served direct from the barrel, although nowadays they have up to 3 hand pumps in operation. Incidentally, a beer festival has been held regularly over the years, traditionally at the engine sheds in Oxenhope, but these days it is spread along various stops along the line, with the 2026 event taking place between October 15th and 18th.
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| The buffet car on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway |
As I mentioned, there were 3 pubs in Calderdale that were well-established Taylors pubs back in the 1970's when I first came across the brewery. They had been acquired as part of a parcel of pubs Taylors bought from Parker & Co of Haworth in 1956. They were all in pretty rural settings, with two of them within a mile of each other in the parish of Wadsworth, high on the hills above Hebden Bridge. The wonderfully-named Mount Skip Inn which was situated close to a bend on the narrow road between the villages of Midgely and Old Town. It was a friendly, family-run pub, popular with the local farming community, golfers from the nearby golf course, and passing motorists and walkers. Its food was popular, its beer was good, but one of its biggest attractions was on a warm sunny day when a pint sat on the wall outside afforded sweeping views of the valley below and beyond, over Cragg Vale and the Coiners country towards Lancashire. Sadly it closed several years ago, its fate the same as so many rural pubs in the Pennine hills. Its near neighbour, the Hare & Hounds, remained a pub until last year, but has now been sold off by Taylors and will likely be private accommodation, a sad end to what was once a magnet for real ale drinkers. I had probably first been to this pub, which was known locally as Lane Ends, nearly 50 years ago. An old schoolfriend lived on a farm not too far away, and he and his brothers always referred to the Hare and Hounds as Cox's Bar, after the landlord of that time, one Terry Cox, who proudly served the full range of Taylors' beers, including their premium bitter, Landlord, being at the time one of only 3 pubs - all tied houses - who were allowed by the brewery to serve the beer, which seems incredible these days! Over the years whilst still being a mecca for Taylors drinkers it became more food-focussed, provided accommodation, but gradually lost its way and customers. The other pub Taylors had back then was the Cross in the hilltop village of Heptonstall on a neighbouring hillside. This is the only one that remains open having been disposed of by Taylors several years ago. They do still have a representative in Calderdale, the Crossroads at Wainstalls, which they acquired in 2003.
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| Happier times at the now-closed Hare & Hounds |
Meanwhile back in Keighley itself, as the article lamented over the years, places such as the Cricketers, the Burlington, the Globe, the Masons Arms, the Vine, the Eastwood Tavern, and the Burlington have all been lost. Others such as the Friendly, Brown Cow, and Volunteers on Lawkholme Lane still operate, but are no longer run by Taylors. The odd one like the Globe, which the brewery sold off in 2013 and is now closed after a few years operating as a free house, still retains the Taylors livery. Incidentally the article mentioned that the Volunteers has been designated as an Asset of Community Value and is thriving under new ownership, selling beers from Craven Brewery from nearby Cross Hills, and was named Keighley and Craven Community Pub of the Year in Summer 2025, whilst both the Friendly and the Brown Cow (opening image) are both successful free houses, with the latter a Good Beer Guide regular.
One pub that should be in the Guide but isn't is one of the remaining Taylors pubs in Keighley left after this latest cull. The Boltmakers Arms is a small pub is situated next door to an Italian restaurant, and when I walked in when I last visited Keighley in 2024 I was met by a sea of bodies crowded around the bar. I managed to get served fairly quickly though, and as luck would have it, a couple of guys beside me in a corner beside the bar were drinking up and on their way, so I grabbed their spot beside the bar, and went for a pint of Boltmaker because I was in the Boltmakers. There was a great atmosphere here, a really friendly local atmosphere, with the two ladies behind the bar doing a splendid job in keeping everyone watered. If it had opened in the last few years, it would have been called a micropub, as it basically consists of one room with a part wall acting as a divide into two areas. I finished my beer, and ordered a half of Golden Best, Taylors' take on a light mild, which was a style popular in these parts at one time. It's a fruity beer with a malty character with an ABV of 3.4%, making it highly sessionable.
The loss of pubs is always sad but there were at one time so many pubs in Keighley, from Taylors mainly but one or two other brewers as well like Tetleys and Websters, many of which were small and pokey one room affairs it could not possibly be sustainable these days as Keighley as a town has changed dramatically. The general decline in pubs across the country is exacerbated in the old textile towns like Keighley, where generally-speaking, the descendants of those who were eagerly welcomed to work in the woollen or cotton mills back in the 1950's and 1960's do not drink alcohol. Other factors include of course the cost of living crisis, supermarkets offering cheap booze - of which there are a plethora in Keighley, changing social habits, business rates hikes, etc. So Taylors could not be reasonably expected to have kept all those pubs running.
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| The Dog & Gun, Oxenhope...one of the current Taylors' pubs |
Now Taylors is clearly a well-run company, is heavily-committed to real ale, and interestingly has had an American, Tim Dewey, occupying the chief executive's chair since 2014, the first in the company's history not from the family to hold the position. All the shares are though still held by the family maintaining the continuity from over the years. And the decision to sell some more pubs merely continues a practice they have always followed. In fact they have run more than 50 different pubs over the year, plus several off-licences, whilst never having many more than 20 at any one time. The current disposals will leave them with a rump of 14 pubs, mainly in rural West and North Yorkshire with the odd outlier in Lancashire, which history would suggest they will add to if the right pub became available. And whilst Landlord continues to power its way across the country, at the same time it has to be hoped that the company doesn't forget their roots and the locality that sustained it for much of its existence....
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