Highland (Campbeltown) Distillery — Campbeltown Single Malt Whisky

Highland Distillery was a Scotch whisky distillery located on Dalaruan Street in Campbeltown, Argyll, Scotland. It was founded around 1826–1827 by Daniel Mactaggart & Co and was closed by 1852, making it one of the shortest-lived of the roughly thirty distilleries that once operated in the town. Not to be confused with the separate, similarly short-lived West Highland Distillery, which also operated in Campbeltown around the same period.

History

Highland Distillery stood at the corner of Dalaruan Street and Broad Street in Campbeltown. According to the whisky historians Hume and Moss, the operating company was formed around 1826 and distilling began in 1827 under founder Daniel Mactaggart & Co. That partnership was dissolved on 1 October 1831, after which the distillery passed to John MacTaggart, John Grant and George MacLennan, with MacLennan and Grant going on to run it as McLennan & Grant.

Surviving local newspaper records give a glimpse of the distillery's working life. In August 1844, George MacLennan was named in a Campbeltown court case as the distillery's tenant, in a dispute over harbour dues at the neighbouring Dalintober quay. That same month, the Glasgow Chronicle reported a fatal workplace accident at the distillery in which a worker, John Campbell, died after falling into a vessel of hot liquid — the second such fatality reported at the site in a short period. In March 1845, the Glasgow Courier reported that a fire had destroyed the mash house, still house and around 600 gallons of whisky, breaking out just before new proprietors were due to take over the business.

Quick Facts

• Region: Campbeltown
• Founded: c. 1827
• Owner: Daniel Mactaggart & Co (founders); later McLennan & Grant
• Status: Closed

Closure & Legacy

Highland Distillery is generally recorded as having closed around 1852, one of many small Campbeltown distilleries that failed to survive the mid-19th century. Curiously, maps of the town still marked a "Highland Distillery" building on the same Dalaruan Street/Broad Street corner as late as 1865 and 1898, suggesting the structure remained standing, and locally associated with the name, long after production had ceased. The site was later redeveloped for housing, and the last remaining buildings on the corner — by then part of the residential area near what is now Dalaruan Street and New Parliament Place — were finally demolished between 2007 and 2008. Because the distillery closed decades before branded, dated bottlings became common practice, no original Highland Distillery whisky is known to survive or to appear at auction today; unlike some later-closing Campbeltown distilleries, it left no collectible bottlings behind, only a handful of newspaper records and old town maps.