Project, History of Ceylon Tea Website- A Dilmah Initiative by Anura Gunasekera Manager’s bungalow on Allagolla Estate Udapussellawa. Railway line running through a tea plantation between Hatton and Nanu Oya In 1866, when Scotsman James Taylor planted 19 acres of Field no. 7 on Loolecondera Estate, Hewaheta, with a few tea seedlings, he would not have dreamt that he was also sowing the seed for an economic and social revolution, that would reshape the landscape and the future direction of the remote island he had made his home. Unwittingly, he was writing the first page of a long and great history. That inconspicuous beginning, which resulted in an initial export of 23 pounds of tea a few years later, has since bloomed in to an industry covering over 220,000 hectares and an annual export average of 300 million kilogrammes. Industries tend to be reduced to simple statistics, eventually. The effort, ...