1931 Glen Albyn

 

We're fortunate that Glen Albyn and Glen Mhor were situated in a thriving area of Inverness as Muirtown was swallowed up by the distillery. The presence of the Caledonian Canal, Muirtown Basin, and in Glen Mhor's case, the football ground, ensure that photographs do exist.

This particular newspaper image comes from the Aberdeen Press & Journal in 1931 and focuses on the Moray Firth fishing fleet, using the canal to head west to Oban. It looks like the boat is passing through an earlier version of the Muirtown swing bridge into the canal locks. But we should focus on the righthand side and the large presence of Glen Albyn.

This area of Muirtown was home to several businesses, and not all 3 chimneys relate to the distillery itself. I anticipate that only 2 of them relate to Glen Albyn and both of these are at the northern end of the site. There also seems to be goods trailers on the quayside in front of the distillery, which seems possible as in this 1960 image you can see the tracks of goods line that we know was in this area:

The line allowed goods to be loaded and unloaded from the Muirtown Basin. Records for Glen Mhor show that this method of goods transportation was used throughout its life, with an emphasis during its early years. By 1917, casks were shipped by rail and traffic through the Caledonian Canal was mostly passing traffic.

The origins of the track were from the US Navy occupation of the site in 1917. When three and one quarter miles of track were laid and connected to the Highland Railway system.

My thanks once again to the Forgotten Whisky History FB group for the lead image and the opportunity to identify which distillery was in the background.