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Since 2020, National Trust for Scotland archaeologists and volunteers have been working with The Glenlivet to uncover sites and stories relating to Scotch whisky-production, exploring the spirit’s place in the nation’s cultural heritage. One phase of the Pioneering Spirit project investigated the remains of the original Glenlivet distillery in Speyside (see CA 416), while the other side of our research has highlighted rather smaller production sites, surveying and excavating the remains of illicit whisky bothies on land belonging to the Trust.
So far, around 40 such sites have been identified, and nine have been excavated, at Mar Lodge, Torridon, Ben Lomond, and Ben Lawers. Unlicensed whisky bothies have only more recently been considered as a type of archaeological site, and their remains are not always easy to find – you have to think like an Excise Officer, and become a real landscape detective. The easiest approach is to walk up the lines of the small burns, which would have provided water sources for these sites, and look for a small, level platform or short lengths of stone footings. If you ever built a hidden ‘den’ as a child, using a lean-to roof against a steep slope or a stone cliff, and covering it with camouflaging grass, bracken, and heather, that is what an illicit whisky bothy would probably have been like.
Mar Lodge Estate: out of sight
Like the area around The Glenlivet – which was itself founded after an illicit whisky-producer obtained the region’s first licence to distil legally in 1824 – the Trust’s property at Mar Lodge Estate, in the centre of the Cairngorms, forms one of the most-remote locations in Scotland. As such, it was ideal for clandestine whisky-production – and, indeed, in the 1990s survey work undertaken in this area by RCAHMS published some of the first drawn plans of bothy sites in archaeological literature. Seven examples were known before our project there started in 2021, but a number of others have since been discovered by Trust staff – the sort of people who know all the hidden spots in these landscapes.
One such site is Calan’s Bothy (named after Calan, son of the Estate Ecologist, who found it), which is located on the south side of Mar Lodge Estate, on a north-facing hillside around 600m south of the famous Linn of Dee waterfall. It nestles on the west side of a burn gully, where a slight kink to the west means it is obscured from direct line of sight downslope – and it appears that this location may have helped the site to avoid detection while it was active, as none of the Mar Lodge whisky bothies have been discovered to-date in any written sources like estate papers or court records.
This drawing by the National Trust for Scotland reproduces the usual arrangement of an illegal whisky bothy in the Scottish Highlands.
Now that the site has come to the rather-more-benign attention of archaeologists, though, the bothy has been documented as a single-roomed rectangular structure built of dry-stone rubble and turf. It stands on a flat area (probably an old erosion platform) whose south and west edges appear to have been cut back into the gully side, and the hill slope (perhaps augmented with turfs) also appears to have formed most of the building’s west side, which preserves little evidence of a stone wall. On the other three sides, though, dry-stone walls stand up to six rough courses high, with an entrance in the eastern wall. Beyond this is a rough flagstone floor that covers much of the interior (excluding along the length of the north wall, where natural soil was exposed), and in the south-west corner we found a rectangular stone hearth with a stone-capped drain leading away from it. Behind the hearth, a gap in the dry-stone walling suggested the position of a chimney, which may have been formed from, or concealed by, an old, hollowed-out tree stump whose charred remains were found just beyond this gap.
As is common on many bothy sites, the structure yielded very few artefacts – unsurprisingly, as smugglers generally only took what was required to these hidden locations – but a small scatter of glazed ceramic was found within a layer post-dating the building’s abandonment, directly above the internal flagstone floor, which might suggest activity subsequent to the bothy’s regular use and maintenance.
Torridon: The Battle of the Black Pot
In contrast to the Mar Lodge bothies, there is quite a bit of documentary evidence for illicit whisky-making in the Torridon area, largely from the accounts of Excise raids that were published in the 1880s. Much of this material has been collated by local historian Murdo MacDonald in his publication The Battle of the Black Pot (see ‘Further reading’ below), and one account, published in The Scotsman in 1884, speaks of a bothy that Excise Officers stumbled on in full production not more than 300 yards from the dwelling house of Laggiedubh. Its position was described as ‘concealed at the base of a rock in a natural hollow’ but, unusually, it was not located beside a burn. The water used for cooling the worm tub (see box below for more details of the distilling process) was instead drained off into a small pool, where it cooled before being reused.
Strikingly, a site matching this distinctive description was located during the walk-over survey of the Trust’s land at Torridon. Excavation soon followed, and this revealed a low stone-and-earth bank enclosing an oblong area, with one side formed by a small adjacent rock-face, along which a low stone bench had been built. A broken bottle, probably originally for beer but which could be reused for whisky, was found beside this, and further insights into the structure’s function came from a pair of drains that ran down the length of the building and exited through the door.
This was not the only bothy identified in this area: at the eastern end of the Trust estate in Glen Torridon, three new sites have been located and reported by members of the Trust footpath team and by a local stalker. They lie at different heights on the slope of the imposing Liathach mountain: a low one just out of sight of the road in the bottom of the glen, a middle one hidden at the base of a waterfall, and a higher one in a burn gully much further up the hillside. Unfortunately, there do not appear to be any Excise records documenting the discovery of these sites, but the middle one has an unusual juxtaposition with another feature.
When this site, which is well-concealed in the steep-sided gully of the Allt na Tuill Bhain, at the base of a cliff, was excavated, we discovered a lot of charcoal but no artefacts. Indications of illicit whisky-making were initially scarce – but the discovery of a malt-drying kiln just 150m from the structure strengthens the case for it having had this role. The kiln is located at the base of a natural scree slope, partly hidden behind some larger boulders at the back of a terrace, where it would have been out of sight of the road through the glen. Its activities were evidently intended to remain undetected – and when its remains were excavated, we recovered further charcoal samples, as well as a single grain of barley.
Production processes
Whisky-production, whether large-scale and industrial or small-scale and illicit, involves the same processes. First, barley is steeped in water, then allowed to sprout; the barley is then dried (over a fire or in a kiln) and ground down into grist; after that, hot water is added to the grist to form a mash, from which the liquid is drained off and allowed to cool. After this, yeast is added to start the fermentation process, and the resulting weak beer or wash is then added to a copper still and heated until the alcohol evaporates as steam. This condenses in a water-cooled copper worm, and the correct level of alcohol is collected; the distillation process is repeated; and the clear, new-made spirit is stored in barrels, which imparts both flavour and colour.
Ben Lomond: a grate discovery
Perhaps the most-productive site in terms of artefacts was the one that looked the least promising on the surface, at Coire Corrach on the western slopes of Ben Lomond. Initial survey of the site showed it to be a scooped hollow, cut into a burn side, with a short length of wall running for 1m parallel to the water. At first, only three stones from the wall could be seen, but excavation revealed something rather more substantial: a 2m-long revetment with seven courses surviving, standing c.0.7m high. This formed the face of the bothy’s inner wall, but the outer wall had clearly been washed away by the burn, which had also deposited a layer of in-washed gravel and some very large boulders.
All was not lost, however: in the area between the wall and the burn, which must originally have been the interior of the bothy, the project team found three short lengths of iron fire-grate bars, all bent by extreme heat. A fourth, longer bar had previously been found eroding out of the burn side at this same point by NTS Rangers, and as a group these bars are very similar in form to examples recovered from around the still fire-boxes at The Glenlivet distillery. Close to two of the Ben Lomond bars, we also found four oak barrel-staves, which may have formed part of the bothy’s worm tub, as well as a small lead patch with rivet holes, which had probably been used to repair a leaking barrel.
We have located the likely position, too, where the fire grate may have sat under the pot still. This was represented by a stub of heavily burnt walling, 0.8m long by 0.5m high, which protruded from the base of the slope 1.2m north-east of the main wall. As for the structure’s date, the discovery of a number of chunks of unburnt coal, and the presence of the iron fire-grate, suggest that this site may belong to the first half of the 19th century.
Ben Lawers: the water of life?
Some of the sites that we explored lay on well-trodden ground. For example, the Trust’s estate at Ben Lawers, on North Lochtayside, was extensively surveyed by RCAHMS as part of the Ben Lawers Historic Landscape Project back in the early 2000s. This survey mapped a wide range of site types, with a particular focus on the townships and shielings of the 18th and 19th century, and its discoveries included the remains of four illicit whisky bothies. One of these sites, at Allt A’Mhoirneas, on the lower south-eastern slopes of Meall nan Tarmachan, was particularly unusual, being located within a shieling group of more than 20 turf and stone huts that would have been occupied during the 17th to 19th centuries, and it was chosen to be excavated as part of our Pioneering Spirit project.
We opened a trapezoidal trench to capture the full extent of the bothy’s irregularly shaped hollow, which measured 8m long, and tapered from 5m wide at its uphill (south-west) end, to 2m wide at its downhill (north-east) end. Parallel to the burn ran a rough, 3.5m-long wall which had been built over a number of larger natural boulders. North-west of this, the area of the hollow that cut into the hillslope was fully excavated, but no artefacts were recovered. We did, however, find the base of a single large wooden post in the centre of the hollow, surrounded by a ring of stones. Measuring 0.16m in diameter by 0.57m long, with a clean saw-cut across it, the post had been protruding above the turf and was obviously of relatively recent date. A second modern find came from another terrace close the bothy: a clear glass bottle with a rubber stopper, dating to the 1950s.
Perhaps the unusual setting of this bothy site, within a series of shieling huts, should have warned us that it might not be a traditional example of an illicit whisky bothy. What, then, was it for? We suggest that the mid-20th-century material could instead indicate that the site was used for making illegal alcohol, not by locals but perhaps by the gangs of labourers who were set to building the extensive hydroelectric works that criss-cross the hillside in this area. It is certainly well-known that the construction teams had a culture of heavy drinking – perhaps some moonshine helped them through the hardship of working in such exposed locations.
A whisky bottle from SS Politician, a cargo ship that famously ran aground off the Hebridean island of Eriskay with a cargo of Scotch whisky in 1941, now displayed at Canna House. Image: from the Canna House Collections, National Trust for Scotland
Making a clean getaway
Over the last few years, Pioneering Spirit has been very successful in investigating the distribution, form, and character of illicit whisky bothies on Trust properties. In some cases, we have been able to match up sites with documentary sources, but the majority are not recorded in contemporary accounts. Of course, most moonshine-makers and whisky-smugglers would not have kept written records for fear of prosecution, and where descriptions of sites do survive, these are usually from the Excisemen or from Court proceedings.
Similarly, most illicit distillers would not have taken large quantities of material up to these sites for fear of getting caught or giving their position away, meaning that today artefacts from these locations are relatively rare. Only a few sherds of bottle glass and pottery were recovered during most of our digs, together with some fragments of clay tobacco pipe (smoking and drinking seem to have gone together). The barrel staves and iron fire-grate bars from Ben Lomond are a notable exception to this rule, offering invaluable insights into the distilling process. We have, of course, yet to find part of a copper still – distillers would have dismantled and hidden their expensive equipment when it was not in use, and any sites that were discovered would have been destroyed by the Excise Officers and any copper pot stills removed and melted down.
Nor have we found a single bottle of whisky – however, the National Trust for Scotland does have a number of whisky-related items in its collections, including a complete small copper still from Cortachy, Glen Clova, in Angus that is now on display in the café at House of Dun. We also have a bottle of King’s Ransom whisky in Canna House which, although not an illicit production, had been illegally recovered from the wreck of the SS Politician, of Whisky Galore fame.
Further reading:
• M MacDonald (2011) The Battle of the Black Pot: illicit whisky-making in Torridon (Torridon Publishing).
• C Maclean and C MacCannell (eds) (2017) Scotland’s Secret History: the illicit distilling and smuggling of whisky (Birlinn Ltd).
• For more details on the Pioneering Spirit project, see http://www.nts.org.uk/campaigns/pioneering-spirit.
Source: Derek Alexander and Daniel Rhodes are Archaeologists for the National Trust for Scotland.
All images: National Trust for Scotland, unless otherwise stated
