Rosebank Distillery: Getting ready to raise a glass as doors open at historic Falkirk site

It has been a slow, painstaking process since Ian Macleod Distillers announced it was going to rebuild the historic Lowland distillery in October 2017. What with the Covid pandemic, a collapsed wall that led to a redesign, and the complexity of the site located between the A803 Camelon Road and the Forth & Clyde canal, it has taken longer than planned.

But we are almost there, and judging from the outside it’s been worth the wait.

Rosebank’s architects have done a phenomenal job with a design that is strikingly modern yet preserves the heritage of the original building. On the roadside is the stepped roof clad in black zinc and glass-fronted stillhouse on the roadside, while facing the canal is the old Victorian red brick.

Centring and dominating the site and local area is the 108ft chimney stack which has been a Falkirk landmark since the 1860s.

Although it closed just over 30 years ago, there are fond local memories of the old distillery. John Ferguson grew up nearby and remembers swimming in the canal opposite with his school friends during the summer holidays in the 1950’s. That was when Rosebank’s old wooden worm tubs were discharging warm water into the canal.

“You saw it bubbling up and steam coming off, and you’d say ‘Rosebank’s gone’, and the word got round,” he recalls. “But it was cold! It wasnae hot. When the distillery put the water out, it was warmer, but it was still cold. I think it was bravado – everybody else did it, so, you had to do it.”

He also remembers tales from his great uncle who occasionally worked at Rosebank as a carter. His cart had a pail hanging off it with corn to feed the horse, but unknown to the men on the gate it held another pail that overlapped the top, or so the story goes. They were rivetted together with six copper rivets, and the gap between them could hold a pint of whisky. Did it taste all the better for being smuggled?

“Of course it did!” says John.

On June 30, 1993, the last drop of old Rosebank was distilled, and the 11 workers were laid-off. It felt as if the town’s whisky-making days were over, and that feeling only grew as weeds began to sprout from gutters and a bloom of graffiti appeared on the walls.

When copper thieves broke in just after Christmas 2008 and destroyed the stills, it was surely game over?

Instead, Rosebank has risen from the ashes – an extraordinary feat for such a derelict distillery.

The whisky writer Dave Broom was “absolutely overjoyed” when he heard that Rosebank was to be rescued. Seeing round the site soon after Ian Macleod Distiller’s bought it, he said: “I could see that it was going to look sensational. It would have been quite easy to have knocked everything down and built a glorified shed, but they have made something that is beautiful.”

If you have any Rosebank memories you would like to share, please get in touch at [email protected].