🥃 The Lost Distillery Lane To Nowhere
First and foremost, welcome to the many new subscribers who signed up to Whisky Through Time last week. About six years ago, during one of the umpteen lockdowns, I came up with a guide to Edinburgh’s Lost Distilleries. Who knew it was possible to be so productive in between Zoom tastings? Anyway, I’ve been using it ever since as (what the cool, digital marketing kids term) a lead magnet. So, for those of you who are now receiving your first article from me, consider yourself magnetised.
Of course, the beauty of doing this through email is that neither of us has to worry about pleasing or bypassing algorithms and/or wading through AI slop. And to be honest, email does now seem to be the only remaining channel available to me for my extremely geeky, long-form content. However, it doesn’t preclude anyone getting in touch with comments or questions. In fact, I welcome them. Just please don’t send me any fire emojis though. Like flash photography in still houses, they’re really not welcome at all.
With all of this in mind, then, let’s crack on. This week’s piece is about a lost distillery in the Borders and continues from where a previous article left off. If you missed it, you can read it HERE. And yes, it has taken me the best part of a year.
Some of you may remember, I came across this in Kelso: Distillery Lane - a lane that currently leads to ahem nowhere.
Now, in trying to find out about any of Scotland’s lost distilleries, the first port of call should always be Brian Townsend’s Scotch Missed. Genuinely, I don’t know what I would do without this book.
The problem we have here, though, is that Kelso Distillery doesn’t make an appearance.
So, on to our next stop: The Making of Scotch Whisky.
On a side note, if I ever opened an old school whisky bar, I would absolutely call it The Moss & Hume.
The issue we now have, though, is that Kelso Distillery only warrants the most cursory of mentions within this large tome.
Which, in and of itself, poses the first question - why is there so little information about it within the pages of one of the most in-depth and reliable sources a Scotch whisky history geek could ask for?
Quite possibly because the distillery itself was so short-lived (1825 - 1837). With just a twelve year life span, there may not have been that much to report. But there is information out there, as long as you dig deep enough...
We know that the owner of Kelso Distillery - John Mason - eventually went bankrupt. So, rather than combing through the archives for details of the distillery itself, let’s search for this guy instead.
And we find that when John Mason was declared bankrupt in 1837, he wasn’t just a distiller but also a spirit merchant and maltster. But where exactly?
Another search shows that those premises were up for sale a good year or so before Mason was sequestered. And, in trying to flog the premises, some details are given about them.
So, now we know that Kelso Distillery was capable of producing between 800 to 900 gallons weekly. That works out at approximately 3600 to 4000 litres for those of you, like me, who are metrically inclined. This is about the same as Lochlea, Dunphail and Arbikie - so not huge but certainly not insignificant either.
Here, aqua is a term used for whisky or spirit and, from this, it looks as though Mason didn’t have an issue finding customers. Although, perhaps we should take this with a pinch of salt. Firstly, because if you’re trying to sell a distillery at a good price, you’re probably not going to tell folk that the whisky is shite and you can’t shift it for love nor money. Secondly, if things were going so well, why was Mason declared bankrupt?
We can also see that Mason owned a maltings at Mayfield, the buildings of which no longer exist. But this is about half a mile* away from Distillery Lane.
If we head back to Roxburgh Street, where the lane-that-now-leads-to-nowhere is located, we can see that there’s no mention of a Distillery Lane on this map from 1858.
Kelso Mill is marked but this dates from the twelfth century - and is still in operation today - so I doubt that could have been the site of the distillery. But with names such as Peat Wynd, Kiln Wynd and Vault Square for the surrounding streets – thankfully, the town of Kelso has done away with the dodgy sounding Purves’s Entry - is it safe to assume that Kelso Distillery could only have been located within this small area, in front of the mill?
The above advert from 1836 showed that Mason hadn’t been the only owner of Kelso Distillery. He had been in partnership with a guy called Nichol.
The pair had been in partnership between 1830 and 1833 and this announcement from 1840 – jeezo; they were still sorting out Mason’s affairs then, it seems – tells us his name is Peter. And that he was a brewer at Ednam.
The chances are that Nichol left the partnership to set up another one with this other guy Roberton - who was actually called (Peter) Robertson because this is a typo - to run the brewery. And if the below is anything to go by, the brewery was doing very well indeed, shipping ale from the port of Berwick.
And it seems as though whisky from Kelso Distillery was being shipped from there too.
But wait! What’s this? Gunsgreen Distillery? Aha - another lost distillery rabbit hole! And paying subscribers can find out more about Gunsgreen in tomorrow’s follow-up email.
Slà inte! Justine
*Strangely, when it comes to distances on maps, I’m not metrically inclined.