The Great Fire – Majestic Billiard Tables Destroyed Burnt to a Cinder
John Taylor & Son Edinburgh Ltd are one of the finest billiard table and accessories manufacturers in the history of billiards and snooker. Whilst researching this company I came across a listing by Bonhams, a top auction house in the UK.
The firm set up in business as a cabinet-maker in 1825 in West Thistle Street, Edinburgh. 27 years later John Taylor & Son were appointed ‘Cabinet-makers and Upholsterers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen’.
Their Rosemount Cabinet Works at Gardner’s Court were established around 1857. The works measured approximately 150 yards in length, and just 32 feet wide. Why The Scotsman chose to report the area in two different measures I know not!
For those of you familiar with Edinburgh, Gardner’s Court lay between Gardner’s Crescent on the west side and Grove Street on the east. Up to the last decade Grove Street was home to the main site of late Scottish snooker professional Bert De Marco’s business empire, Marco’s. It started life as a snooker hall, but gradually table numbers were reduced and the space vacated was utilised for other leisure facilities. Today there are residential properties on the site.
Business was progressing very nicely for John Taylor & Son until travesty struck, a great fire which was reported in considerable detail by The Scotsman newspaper on 17th October 1896. Despite the size of the works the firm employed nearly 300 men. The engineers were working late the previous night, and around nine o’clock were short of red lead. They sent a young man to fetch the material from a store upstairs. After mixing the lead he washed his hands in a flammable oil called naphtha, and that before they were quite dry he had taken up his lamp to light himself out of the store. The heat from the lamp ignited the naphtha. His coat and vest took fire. His hands and face were badly scorched. He threw his burning clothing onto the floor, thus igniting some inflammable material which quickly spread onto the building itself.
Engineers and others rushed upstairs in a frantic effort to douse the flames using water in their fire buckets. Soon an entire section of the building was ablaze. A message was sent immediately to Torphichen Street Fire Station. The Central Fire Station were also advised. Mr Pordage the Firemaster tuned out every available fireman.
Steam engines were called, but the flames quickly took a firm hold of the roof at the east end of the building. Water was pumped from the nearby Union canal, but the flames successfully crept steadily westwards, and covered the entire roof within an hour. The roof caved in around ten o’clock. Even the locally based North British Company and McEwen’s Brewery sent their hose and tender. Local individuals had also come to join the desperate fight to save the works, bravely removing furniture from the lower floor. Thankfully there was no wind to spread the flames, or the damage would have spread to nearby buildings.
At this time John Taylor & Son were the largest cabinet making and upholstery manufacturer in Edinburgh. There was a large, valuable stock of chairs, carpets, billiard tables and all kinds of goods, many finished to accommodate an important order. Now they had turned into a large pile of smouldering ashes.
By eleven o’clock firemen had the blaze well under control. Throughout this awful spectacle a great crowd had drawn from throughout the city to witness the incident. Doubtless drawn by the rush of fire staff to the site, and the mass of flames engulfing the skyline.
This was the first fire in nearly one hundred years of existence for John Taylor & Son. The regulations against the risk of fire were of the most stringent kind. Men were forbidden to take matches in their pockets into the premises. Employees had even been summarily dismissed for breaking this regulation!
John Taylor & Son Edinburgh Ltd survived this dreadful occurrence, continuing as a family business until early 1946. The Scotsman newspaper of 16th February that year stated that the business and all its’ branches had been acquired as a going concern by Alexander Ross Hewitt. The price? £5,000 in £1 shares. Mr Hewitt appointed himself a director, along with a Mrs Jean Bulloch or Hewitt. Most probably his wife.
The business later moved to 109-110, Princes Street, the main shopping thoroughfare of Edinburgh today. In the company’s final years its’ premises was reduced to just 110 Princes Street, until finally, the doors were closed on a snooker and billiards table legend in 1968.
I worked at this address in 1989 and 1990, when it was, as is still the case today, Debenhams department store.
Fraser Paterson
Text and images © Fraser Paterson
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