Coming to you in Didsbury …….. a barrel of Taylor Eagle’s best bitter. ….. by steam lorry

The brewey's; steam wagon

Now if you had been walking in the vicinity of the Royal Oak or the Station sometime just before 1914, you might have seen the steam lorry of Taylor Eagle delivering beer to our two pubs.

The brewery was founded by Joseph Taylor in 1849, registered in February 1888 and was sold in 1924 to a company which retained 60 pubs and was acquired by Marston, Thompson and Evershed Ltd in 1958.*

Now, it is easy to fall into the trap of speculating on the origin of the name Eagle in the title, and I wish there were something bizarre about how it came to be included.

But alas it is nothing more exciting than that the brewery was situated on Eagle Street, although later it was listed on Lloyd Street and Burlington Street which almost adjoins it.  It was here by 1863, and was advertised as “Taylor, Joseph, ale & porter brewer Eagle Brewery, Lloyd Street, Burlington Street, Oxford Street, Chorlton on Medlock”.

The full description

Mr. Taylor does appear to have prospered, because thirteen years earlier, he didn’t qualify to be listed in the trades section as a brewer and only appears in the alphabetical listings of the directory as “brewer 12 Calder Street”, and “beer retailer 25 Brownhill Street”, both in Salford.

It is a measure of just how modest his two enterprises were back in 1850, that neither Calder Street nor Brownhill Street were significant enough to be included in the directory.

 Nor does he show up in the historic records. 

In 1851, a Joseph Taylor is recorded as a pauper in the Salford Workhouse, while a second was living in Prestwich, was 73, and on “private means”, neither of which is he.

So, the search will go on, but in the meantime, I do have a map showing the brewery in 1893, a couple of beer bottles bearing the company name, and of course the ongoing mystery of where to find Mr. Taylor.

And a later steam engine

But, for all those who like lists, I do have a full list of the pubs owned by Taylor’s Eagle Brewery.  Most are in Manchester, with a few in Salford and others in faraway Altrincham, Knutsford, Timperley and Urmston, but the company had two in Didsbury, of which the second was the Station, but that is a story in another chapter.

And to compliment that list my old friend Bob Potts offered up an even more fascinating list of pubs and the year they obtained their first license covering the city centre, and the surrounding areas including Didsbury.

For the record, Bob  produced a fine book on the pubs of Hulme and Chorlton on Medlock. **

His records offer up a date of 1847 for its first license, and I wonder whether our Mr. Taylor on a visit out from Salford set about persuading the beer keeper at the Royal Oak to give up making his own beer and turn instead to Mr. Talyor’s “superior ales and porters”, which I am the first to accept is silly speculation.

And that is it.

Location; Didsbury

Picture; Taylor Eagle Brewery Steam Wagon, circa 1914 GMC Records, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and a later steam lorry, 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Brewerypedia, http://breweryhistory.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page 

 ** Potts, Bob The Old Pubs of Hulme and Chorlton-on-Medlock, 1997