Number 109, High Street, Cowes - building history

109 High Street Cowes is currently the fantastic Shoreline, they sell gifts, greeting cards, as well as offering picture framing, trophy engraving and key cutting.

Numbers 108 (now TM Taylors) and 109 were inhabited by the Taylor family for a great many years. Father Robert Taylor worked next door at number 108 as a grocer, builder, and coal merchant, son William as a carpenter and daughter Emily (Rowe) had a stationery business. . Another of Robert’s sons, Thomas Mackford Taylor, born in 1857 took over this shop (number 109) around 1881 and ran a jewellery business. He lived at the shop with his wife and children until his death in 1915. From the 1880s, TM Taylor jewellers was noted for its ‘magnificent choice of gold and gem rings and keepers’, for being a ‘noted wedding ring shop’ and for being the ‘nearest jeweller to Pier and Railway Station’. In the early 1900s, they also offered free sight testing and were the only certified opticians in the town. . The jewellery business TM Taylors eventually moved next door to number 108 at some point between the 1950s-80s (not sure when) and continues to be a successful high street business today with branches in Newport.