A Bingley-born brewer and a deep well.

Timothy Taylor’s brewery began in Keighley, in West Yorkshire, in 1858. The company says Timothy Taylor, who was born in nearby Bingley, opened his first brewery on Cook Lane that year in partnership with James Shackleton and John Naylor, and bought his first pub, the Volunteers Arms, a year later. A history of the firm by Malcolm Toft, published by the Brewery History Society, says Taylor had married Charlotte Aked, the daughter of the printer Robert Aked, in 1857.

In 1863 Taylor moved to a new site, Knowle Spring, and began brewing and malting there; the company says he bought out his former partners with financial help from his father-in-law. The brewery has stayed on that site ever since. In 1894 a deep well was sunk at Knowle Spring, and the company says water from that aquifer is still used for brewing today.

In 1898 Timothy Taylor’s sons formed a partnership to run the business, Toft writes, and it became a private limited company in 1929. Toft also records that the company made malt both for its own use and for sale, and bought a maltings in Leeds in 1890. The company says the brewery was put up for sale in 1928 but that a bid from Allsopp’s was withdrawn, and that malting stopped at Knowle Spring the same year; Toft dates the end of malting to 1927.

The family’s hold was tested in the 1950s. The company says that in 1953 death duties threatened the business, and that it was kept going by the financial help of Sir John Horsfall, who married Percy’s widow Gladys, together with the determination of her son John. Toft records that John Taylor, later made a life peer as Lord Ingrow, retired as chairman and managing director in 1995. The company describes itself today as still in the Taylor family.

Landlord, and the beers around it.

The beer that carries the brewery’s name around Britain is Landlord, a pale ale. The company dates it to 1952 and credits Philip Taylor. Toft’s history adds that Philip Taylor created it with Rupert A. Henfrey, that it was first a bottled beer, that its name was chosen through a competition, and that a draught version was developed later. The pub estate grew alongside the beer: Toft records that the firm’s largest single purchase of pubs came in 1956, when it bought seven houses from E. Parker & Co of Haworth.

The rest of the range has been reshaped around it. English Wikipedia says the brewery’s Best Bitter was renamed Boltmaker in 2012 to distinguish it more clearly from Golden Best, and that Ram Tam was renamed Landlord Dark in 2019. The company says Knowle Spring, a blonde beer named after the brewery’s home, joined the core range in 2017; English Wikipedia calls it the first addition to the core range since 1952. Wikipedia also says Poulter’s Porter, first brewed in 2017, is named after Arthur Poulter, a former brewery employee who received the Victoria Cross in the First World War.

The brewhouse itself has a borrowed history. In 1991, the company says, it installed a brewhouse bought from the closed Oldham Brewery, the start of a long programme of investment at Knowle Spring. The company also says Charles Dent retired as managing director in 2014 and became president, when Tim Dewey was appointed chief executive, and that Dewey retired in 2025 and was succeeded by Andrew Carter.

Family brewers and their pubs.

The seven brewers in this group are all English regional and family names: St Austell, Timothy Taylor, Marston’s, Wadworth, Hook Norton, Black Sheep and Harvey’s. Most of them are Victorian or older. John Marston set up in Burton upon Trent in 1834, English Wikipedia says; Hook Norton dates from 1849 in the Oxfordshire village of the same name; Walter Hicks founded what became St Austell Brewery in Cornwall in 1851; Timothy Taylor began brewing in Keighley in 1858 and moved to Knowle Spring in 1863, the company says; and Wadworth has brewed in Devizes since 1875. Harvey’s of Lewes dates itself to 1790. Black Sheep is the newcomer: English Wikipedia says Paul Theakston set it up in Masham in 1991, after his family’s brewery in the same town had been taken over.

Their ownership has gone in different directions. Several still describe themselves as family businesses: Timothy Taylor says the brewery remains in the Taylor family; Wadworth says it passed from Henry Wadworth to his founding partner John Smith Bartholomew and is now in the fifth generation of Bartholomew family ownership; Hook Norton’s managing director James Clarke is a fifth-generation descendant of the founder, John Harris, according to an interview with The Morning Advertiser that the brewery republishes; and Harvey’s says it has been in the custodianship of John Harvey’s descendants since 1790. St Austell says it was founded as a family-owned company, and on 1 July 2016 it bought Bath Ales, English Wikipedia says. Marston’s went the other way: in 2020 its brewing business joined Carlsberg’s UK arm in the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company, Carlsberg bought out Marston’s remaining stake in July 2024, and since January 2025 the breweries have been part of Carlsberg Britvic, according to English Wikipedia. Black Sheep entered administration in May 2023 and was bought by the London investment firm Breal Capital, The Caterer reported on 31 May 2023; in January 2026 its owner, Keystone Brewing Group, was sold in a pre-pack deal to the newly formed Great British Drinks Company, The Caterer reported on 22 January 2026.

A brewer’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a pump clip, a name and the town it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands or changed how and where it brews. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the brewery says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and how its pump clips and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A new face for the Landlord in 2026.

In September 2026 Timothy Taylor’s unveiled its first major brand refresh in more than a decade. Brewers Journal reported on 1 September that it covered an updated logo, pump clips, glassware and bottles, with a British racing green palette, more informative beer descriptions and more premium finishes, intended to help the beers stand out at the bar and reach newer drinkers while keeping the brand’s heritage. The magazine described the company as an independent family brewery and placed the refresh within a longer-term investment in cask beer and the brewery site.

Andrew Carter, the chief executive, said the refresh “isn’t about changing what we brew,” and that the recipes, ingredients and approach to brewing stayed the same. “For 168 years we’ve believed that if you brew great beer properly, people will keep coming back to it,” he said. The redesign was also reported by CAMRA’s West Berkshire branch.

The most visible change was to the figure on Landlord itself. Writing in Creative Bloq on 12 September 2026, Daniel John said the new Landlord character was younger, with a full head of hair, where the old figure had looked like a stereotypical pub landlord, and that he agreed with the backlash the redesign had drawn.

For a design guide, Timothy Taylor shows how a family brewery’s best-known beer can become its face, and why changing that face is noticed. Compare Theakston, another Yorkshire family brewer, and Black Sheep, its neighbour in Masham. For this guide we use racing green, pale-ale gold and cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Timothy Taylor’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.