Falkirk has always been proud of its skyline – at one end of the town, which lies between Glasgow and Edinburgh, sit The Kelpies, a pair of massive 300-tonne sculptures of mythical Scottish water horses unveiled in 2013, while at the other stands the Falkirk Wheel, the world’s only rotating boat lift, opened in 2002 to link the Union and Forth & Clyde canals.
Between the two protrudes a pair of much older monuments: the famous 43-metre Georgian steeple on the town’s high street, once home to the jail, and the equally-loved red brick chimney at the old Rosebank distillery, nestled on the canal bank. Local people, known affectionately as ‘Bairns’, long feared that the chimney would be demolished following the distillery’s closure, robbing the town of one of its most distinctive landmarks.
Now, the chimney – and the new distillery that surrounds it – are in safe hands. Today (7 June), the new Rosebank distillery will welcome visitors for the first time. Having gone silent for 30 years, the distillery that was once known as ‘The King of the Lowlands’, is ready to reclaim its throne, thanks to a new team and new stills, but the same spirit character.
Auspicious beginnings
Rosebank traces its roots back to 1840, when James Rankine – a local wine merchant and tea blender – turned the former maltings for the nearby Camelon distillery into a distillery in its own right. It eventually became part of United Distillers & Vintners (UDV), one of the
