Springside Distillery — Campbeltown Single Malt Whisky

Springside Distillery was a Scotch whisky distillery located in Campbeltown, on Scotland's Kintyre peninsula. It was founded around 1830 by John Colvill & Co. and closed in 1926, one of the many casualties of the collapse of the Campbeltown whisky industry in the early twentieth century. Alfred Barnard, who toured it in the mid-1880s, recorded it as the smallest of the distilleries then operating in the town.

History

Springside stood off Glebe Street/Burnside Street in Campbeltown, close to what is now Springbank Distillery, during the town's Victorian heyday as one of Scotland's principal whisky-producing centres, with around thirty distilleries operating there at the industry's peak. When the distilling historian Alfred Barnard visited as part of his tour of the United Kingdom's distilleries (published in 1887 as "The Whisky Distilleries of the United Kingdom"), he described Springside as "a scattered lot of buildings placed around a small yard," noting its granaries, peat-fired kilns and washbacks, and recorded an annual output of around 30,000 gallons - the smallest production of any Campbeltown distillery he visited. Beyond Barnard's account, detailed records of Springside's ownership, plant and output are scarce, and it never achieved the wider recognition of larger neighbours such as Springbank or Glen Scotia.

Quick Facts

• Region: Campbeltown
• Founded: c. 1830
• Owner: John Colvill & Co. (closed; no current owner)
• Status: Closed

Closure & Legacy

Springside closed in 1926 amid the near-total collapse of the Campbeltown whisky trade, which shrank from around thirty working distilleries to a small handful within about a decade, driven by the loss of the American export market during Prohibition, a glut of poor-quality spirit, and the wider economic downturn of the period. The distillery buildings were later demolished, and part of the site was absorbed into the adjoining Springbank Distillery, whose "Warehouse No. 1" on Glebe Street now occupies former Springside ground and is still used to mature Springbank's own stock. No original Springside bottlings are known to have survived, and because the distillery shut decades before independent bottlers began routinely releasing casks from defunct distilleries, it remains one of Scotland's more obscure "ghost" distilleries today, known chiefly through Alfred Barnard's brief 1880s account.