Whisky No More

I was kind of stumped for a blip today until I spotted this place on the drive home tonight. I'd remembered it had caught my eye and piqued my interest when Blipper posted a very nice black and white from here a few weeks back and decided to have a wander around the building myself.

Going down there this evening triggered some sort of recollection of coming down here regularly many years ago with my parents. I'm pretty sure the wooden sheds down here used to house a little farm shop that sold fruit and veg and had some sort of pre B&Q/Klondyke garden centre too.

As mentioned in Blipper's post, the history surrounding the place is pretty fascinating - at one time in the early 18th century it was Scotland's largest whisky distillery and, when the nearby Kilbagie also opened for production the combined duty paid by the pair of them was greater than all the land tax collected in the whole of Scotland. The operation was massive and hugely pioneering in its day and I was completely unaware of all this, even though my Dad worked in Kilbagie (when it was a paper mill) for over 40 years.

There's a very nice wee website with loads of info on the place and it would appear Historic Scotland is now involved in trying to preserve the buildings. Hopefully the ongoing fundraising (the sale of a commemorative whisky for starters) will indeed prevent this building and the history surrounding it disappearing forever. That'd be a real shame.