Clydeside Distillery


(Old Pump House)

A modern distillery and visitor centre located in a revitalised B-listed building which was once a pump-house providing hydraulic power to the former Queen's Dock on the northern shore of the River Clyde in Glasgow. The Clydeside Distillery was opened in 2017 by family-owned Morrison Glasgow Distillers. Representing the first malt distillery to be built in Glasgow for 40 years, the disused pump-house was purchased and refurbished at a cost of £10.5 million.

The distillery includes two copper stills, enclosed in an impressive glass extension to the original building, overlooking the river, and takes its water from the domestic supply which emanates from Lock Katrine. It includes a visitor centre which explores the history of Glasgow, its whisky industry and the former Queen's Dock. The Distillery lies on the site of one of Glasgow's first shipyards at Kelvinhaugh (1830), while the Queen's Dock lay to the east and Yorkhill Quay to the west.

There is a family connection which brought the distillery here; the great grandfather of developer Tim Morrison was John Morrison of Morrison and Mason, who built the pump-house and adjacent Queen's Dock, the largest of Glasgow's commercial docks, which was built 1872-80, closed 1969 and in-filled using the rubble from the demolition of the former St. Enoch Station in 1975-77. The Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre now occupies the site.

The pump-house provided power to the swing-bridge at the entrance to the Queen's Dock, together with its cranes. After the pump-house was abandoned in the 1970s, the building served as a restaurant and eventually the Clyde Maritime Museum, which included the S.V. Glenlee, which moved downstream to become part of the new Riverside Museum in 2011. The distillery represents the southern end of the Kelvin Walkway.


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