Finding Scotland's Lost Whisky Stills: What Archaeology Reveals
Scotland's lost whisky stills survive as sunken huts, hearths, drains and stone platforms, sometimes with fragments of the equipment itself. Archaeology reveals how these places worked, from concealed bothies beside Highland burns to early licensed distilleries with separate working areas and fittings designed for Excise supervision.[1][3][7][11]
Finding Scotland's lost whisky stills
At Newe's Craig in Aberdeenshire, the evidence is a small hut sunk into a concealed gully. Historic Environment Scotland interprets it as an illicit still site dating to the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. It measures about 3.5 metres by 3 metres, with substantial drystone walls and running water beneath the rubble suggesting that it was built over a spring.[1]
Claim: The Newe's Craig hut has running water beneath it. Historic Environment Scotland.
Verdict: Documented
What the record shows: Running water beneath the rubble suggests the hut was built over a spring. Historic Environment Scotland.
Evidence against or gap: The spring is an interpretation of the observed water. Historic Environment Scotland.
Earliest known source: The supplied record is the designation added in 2007. Historic Environment Scotland.
Last checked: 5 November 2026.
That combination of shelter, concealment and water gives the ruin its meaning. HES describes the site as “Rare, tangible remains of an illicit rural industry which looms large in the folklore of the Highlands”. It was added to the schedule of monuments in September 2007 under the category “Industrial: distilling”.[1]
Newe's Craig is not an isolated survival. The scheduled complex between Dubrach and Dalvorar on Mar includes three confirmed still sites. At Carn Bhithir, the Aberdeenshire Historic Environment Record describes a hut on a steep hillside, supplied by a stone-lined lade, a channel carrying water from a gully.[2][3]
Excavation at Carn Bhithir revealed a sunken, roughly circular drystone structure with a carefully made flagstone floor. A little burnt heather survived too. These are modest remains, but together they give archaeologists something more substantial than a place-name or a smuggling tale: a working space, a water supply and evidence of burning.[3]
Reading water, stone and fire
The Highland research framework identifies three essentials close to still sites: fuel, barley and water. It also records associated structures interpreted as lookouts, stores or accommodation. The archaeology therefore extends beyond the spot where the still stood to the practical arrangements around it.[10]
The National Trust for Scotland's Pioneering Spirit project, run with The Glenlivet, has investigated sites at Mar Lodge, Torridon, Ben Lomond and Ben Lawers. Its published account describes following small burns and looking for level platforms or short stretches of stone footing. Lean-to roofs against slopes or cliffs could be covered with grass, bracken and heather.[6]
At Calan's Bothy on Mar Lodge, excavation exposed a single-room building of drystone and turf. It had an entrance in the east wall, a flagstone floor and a stone hearth in the south-west corner, accompanied by a stone-capped drain. At Torridon, another site contained a low stone bench, a broken bottle and two drains leading through the doorway.[6]
The methods can be equally varied. At Blackmiddens, researchers combined measured survey, photogrammetry, documents, an 1829 map and X-ray fluorescence soil testing for copper.[11]
Why the copper is usually missing
The most recognisable object, the copper still itself, is not what these excavations routinely recover. Reporting the Ben Lawers discovery in May 2026, HeritageDaily quoted NTS Head of Archaeology Derek Alexander explaining that stills found by excise officers would normally be seized and destroyed.[9]
The Ben Lawers bothy, near Lochan nan Cat on the upper Lawers Burn, yielded a copper alloy fitting believed to connect parts of a still. Researchers matched it to an illustration in an early twentieth-century Gaelic dictionary. The excavation also found hearth burning, a stone-lined drain beneath the floor and a timber roof support.[9]
It was the first of five suspected bothies at Ben Lawers to produce part of a copper still. That makes the fitting an unusually direct connection with the equipment, while the hearth, drain and building remain essential to understanding its setting.[9]
Not every concealed site was far into inaccessible mountains. The North of Scotland Archaeological Society's Strathconon survey identified more than 50 still sites, including examples in lower, more accessible woodland as well as remote mountain terrain. Concealment and remoteness were not necessarily the same thing.[10]
Claim: The Strathconon survey identified more than 50 still sites. Scottish Archaeological Research Framework.
Verdict: Documented
What the record shows: The research framework reports sites in remote mountain terrain and in more accessible woodland. Scottish Archaeological Research Framework.
Evidence against or gap: This is a survey count for Strathconon, not a national count. Scottish Archaeological Research Framework.
Earliest known source: The supplied source is the research framework; its publication date is not supplied. Scottish Archaeological Research Framework.
Last checked: 5 November 2026.
When excavation meets the written record
Documents can guide the search, but their usefulness varies sharply between places. Alexander and Rhodes describe using nineteenth-century accounts of excise raids, brought together by local historian Murdo MacDonald in The Battle of the Black Pot. An 1884 Scotsman report helped locate a Torridon bothy concealed beneath a rock in a natural hollow.[6]
That report placed the bothy within about 274 metres (300 yards) of a house and described cooling water draining into a pool for reuse. At Mar Lodge, by contrast, the project's authors report that the bothies do not appear in estate papers or court records. Fieldwork supplies evidence that those written collections do not.[6]
Archaeology can establish that structures survive, document their arrangement and recover material from them. A named operator or a precise operating year requires a different level of evidence: Newe's Craig, for example, carries the broad date of the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries.[1]
Upper Drumin offers a richer combination of excavation and documentation. The first-edition Ordnance Survey map, surveyed in 1864, marks George Smith's “old distillery”. The site worked from 1824 to 1859, before production moved to Minmore.[7]
Its still room contained three furnaces against the south wall, serving a water boiler, wash still and spirit still. There was also an oak vat set into the floor and two receivers. Copper piping, a small copper cup, cork oak bungs and perforated malt kiln bricks added further detail to the excavated layout.[7]
Story box: The exciseman's lock
Founding story: Upper Drumin, George Smith's first licensed distillery, operated from 1824. Source: Alexander and Rhodes, 2024.[7]
Turning point: Production moved to Minmore in 1859. Source: Alexander and Rhodes, 2024.[7]
Documented record: Excavation recovered a brass component marked “Gottlieb Patent”, belonging to a lock patented in 1829 for Excise use. Its paper insert was designed to tear if the lock was tampered with. Sources: 2024 account and 2021 excavation report.[7][8]
Claim: An Excise lock component was recovered at Upper Drumin. Current Archaeology 383.
Verdict: Documented
What the record shows: Both excavation accounts identify a component of the Gottlieb lock.[7][8]
Evidence against or gap: The accounts name the component differently; the precise part name remains unresolved.[7][8]
Earliest known source: The excavation report published on 26 December 2021, Current Archaeology 383.[8]
Claim-source mapping: Operation and relocation: 2024 account. Lock discovery and tamper-evident insert: 2021 report.
Last checked: 5 November 2026.
Beyond the hidden bothy
The transition to licensed production left its own archaeological record. Blackmiddens in the Cabrach operated from 1825 to 1833 and was excavated in 2019 and 2021. Its building, about 10 metres by 6.3 metres, was set into a slope.[11]
Researchers identified areas associated with malting tiles, a wash still, a spirit still platform, an external worm tub platform and an Excise Room. Unlike the concealed bothies, this site preserves a layout that includes a dedicated space for official supervision.[11]
Blackmiddens also prevents the move into licensed distilling from becoming too tidy a success story. Bratt and Bye-Jensen report that all three early Cabrach distilleries, Blackmiddens, Tomnaven and Lesmurdie, had failed by the middle of the nineteenth century.[11]
At Mulchaich on the Black Isle, a NoSAS survey recorded seven buildings, a still house below a spring-fed pond and a kiln with a two-compartment barn. Its unusually wide flue was interpreted as possibly belonging to a transitional malt kiln.[12]
These sites broaden what “lost stills” means. Alongside the hidden hut are water systems, kilns, working rooms and traces of supervision. The strongest accounts keep those different kinds of evidence together without making a drain, a copper fragment or an old map say more than it can support.[1][7][11][12]
Sources
[1] Historic Environment Scotland. Newe's Craig, still 3950m NE of Morven Lodge, scheduled monument SM11469, designation record, added 27 September 2007.
https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/SM11469
[2] Historic Environment Scotland. Mar, townships, enclosures, stills, kilns, Dubrach to E of Dalvorar, scheduled monument SM6455, designation record, added 7 October 1996.
https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/SM6455
[3] Aberdeenshire Council Historic Environment Record. MAB30989, Carn Bhithir, record incorporating excavation reported in 2021.
https://her.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/Monument/MAB30989
[6] Derek Alexander and Daniel Rhodes. Distilling a clandestine craft: Exploring the archaeology and history of illicit whisky-making. Current Archaeology 420, 7 March 2025.
https://archaeology.co.uk/articles/features/distilling-a-clandestine-craft-exploring-the-archaeology-and-history-of-illicit-whisky-making.htm
[7] Derek Alexander and Daniel Rhodes. Pioneering spirit: Exploring the archaeology and history of The Glenlivet whisky. Current Archaeology 416, 1 October 2024.
https://the-past.com/?p=71923
[8] Current Archaeology. Unlocking the archaeology of Speyside malt whisky. Issue 383, 26 December 2021.
https://the-past.com/?p=22103
[9] Mark Milligan. Archaeologists uncover hidden whisky bothy in the Scottish Highlands. HeritageDaily, 12 May 2026.
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2026/05/archaeologists-uncover-hidden-whisky-bothy-in-the-scottish-highlands/158060
[10] Scottish Archaeological Research Framework. 10.5.7 Brewing and Distilling. Highland Historic Environment Research Framework.
https://scarf.scot/regional/higharf/post-medieval/10-5-craft-and-industry/10-5-7-brewing-and-distilling/
[11] Darroch D. M. Bratt and Peter Bye-Jensen. A Quick Buck: An Early Licensed Whisky Distillery at Blackmiddens Farm in the Cabrach. Internet Archaeology 61, 2023.
https://www.intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue61/3/full-text.html
[12] North of Scotland Archaeological Society. Visit Mulchaich Distillery.
https://www.nosas.co.uk/visitmulchaichdistillery
This desk-researched article uses the site's verified fact sheet, drawing on designation records, archaeological reports, a research framework and published excavation accounts.
Last checked: November 2026