Rebuilding Diary

A lot has happened in the last month!

Kirkwood's carpenters have almost finished building the new roof on the East Bonded Warehouse. This roof was formed using lightweight wooden trusses and asbestos sheeting. This may have been original; Nigel Campbell, Kirkwood's foreman, thinks so! We've stripped this old roof off completely and replaced it with heavy duty larch trusses, all handmade on site, and covered it in sarking and a breathable membrane in readiness for the slates (recovered from another old building elsewhere). The West Bonded Warehouse originally had proper roof trusses, sarking and slates. Unfortunately, this was very rotten in parts but it has been repaired and is ready for re-slating. It will give us an enormous thrill to see these buildings re-roofed.

Internally, both of our Bonded Warehouses were two-storey dunnage-style warehouses. Subject to obtaining permission from the local fire officer, we hope to reinstate the interiors exactly as they would have been 100 years ago.

The roofs to the Maltings and the Kiln were also very dilapidated, due largely to infestation of woodworm. These roofs have been stripped back, ready for treatment and repair during week commencing 03/10/2011. Scaffolding has been erected right to the very pinnacle of the Charles Doig Malt Kiln. What a magnificent view this affords of the distillery and the surrounding countryside. 

Malcolm Rennie (Distillery Manager – ex Kilchoman) has been overseeing the civil engineering work in the Maltings in preparation for the installation of our two gigantic malt bins (each of 30 tonnes – one for peated malt and the other for unpeated malt). These bins only just fit inside the Maltings (with 20mm to spare). Malcolm also has responsibility for managing the entire project on a day-to-day basis and is the key liaison with Forsyth's of Rothes, the company building the distillery plant.

We're converting the Mill Room (built by Johnnie Walker circa 1900) into our new Still House. The location of the Johnnie Walker Mill, which was driven by a water wheel (supplemented by a steam engine), was completely out of sequence for efficient running of the distillery. Fortunately, we've been able to buy a sturdy Porteous Mill (ex-Caperdonich Distillery) which will be installed in the Maltings.

The Mash House, which will be the very heart of Annandale Distillery, is in very poor condition. Repairs to the Mash House along with the substantial re-modelling required to form our new Still House, has been very challenging for our engineers. Fortunately, we have retained John Addison as our structural engineer, so it's in very safe hands.

In the early afternoon, eight visitors from Historic Scotland arrived on site for a guided tour (Historic Scotland is providing grant aid for some of the repairs to the historic buildings). We provided shepherd's pie for lunch, prepared by Teresa Church (co-owner) and Eva Church (my mother-in-law). Fortunately, my uncle and aunt (John & Nancy Wright from Plane Castle in Stirlingshire) and my sister and her partner (Christine Lyon and Bert Smith) were able to come along too, so it was something of a family event.

Later in the afternoon, Neil Wilson (from Neil Wilson Publishing) arrived to conduct an interview for an article on Annandale Distillery that he's writing for Whisky Magazine. Neil's company has published many books on Scotch whisky, including the superb Scotch Missed by Brian Townsend, which is where we first read about Annandale Distillery. Neil was all the more welcome when we established that he was a 'local boy' who had grown up in Lockerbie and knew of my aunt (Nancy Wright).

Finally, Bryan Armstrong, Editor of the Annandale Observer, conducted an interview to update local readers on progress at the distillery.