Whisky Distilleries

Yesterday's post was about attending archaeological conferences, and what one can learn from them. Today's describes probably the best moment of those two days, when Forestry Commission Scotland's archaeologist, Matt Ritchie, showed a site at Dog Falls in Glen Affric (link here) which he said was the well-documented remains of a building which had, in the latter 18th or early 19th century, housed an illicit whisky still - and it looked exactly like this building tucked against a bank below a waterfall on the Allt Rath a Bheulain.

There are other, similar buildings on similar sites across western Ardnamurchan. This picture was taken on our walk on Wednesday, and shows another whisky distillery on the Allt na Doire Buidhe. It's in a perfect position - remote, concealed, with a good supply of fresh water which can be ducted into the building from the waterfall, and within easy reach of woodland for fuel.

The building is on Tornamona land and, while it isn't far from the B8007 today, it was much more remote in those days. If you want to see it, it's at NM546647, a couple of hundreds metres south of the road.

Now that we know what we're looking for, we'll find more of western Ardnamurchan's rich whisky-distilling history. We might even find a bottle someone left behind.