This thread was originally written and published in November 2019.
In December 2019, the Edinburgh Evening News ran an article about a new brewery planned for the city which it claimed “will be the first major brewery to be built in Edinburgh for 150 years.” (and also the biggest).
By my count (luckily, I keep a handy spreadsheet of such things for such counting eventualities) there were actually fifteen major breweries built in Edinburgh in the last 150 years and a good number of these were larger. So let’s take a closer look at them.
Starting us off at number 15 is the Caledonian Brewery – universally known as The Caley – it was opened by Lorimer & Clark 150 years ago (at the time of first writing) in 1869 in Shandon. This was one of the first Edinburgh brewers taken over by an English firm, Vaux, in 1947, who closed it in 1985. It reopened soon after in a management buyout and was one of the pioneers of the real ale revival locally. It was still going strong currently under threat of closure closed by then owners Heineken in 2022 and will likely be sold off for housing.
At number 14, G. & J. Machlachlan’s Castle Brewery opened in the Grassmarket in 1875, some 144 years ago. It relocated out to Craigmillar in 1901 as the New Castle Brewery (not to be confused with the Newcastle Brewery!). The Grassmarket site was sold in 1913 and was used as a mines rescue and research station by a consortium of Lothians mining companies. It is now part of the site of George Heriot’s School.
A non-mover at number 13, Jeffrey’s opened the New Heriot Brewery at Roseburn in 1880. This replaced a facility in the Grassmarket along from the Castle which was known, unsurprisingly, as the Heriot Brewery and took its name from that nearby school (see picture). Brewing took place at Roseburn until 1992, by which time it was an outpost of Glaswegian lager manufacturer Tennent Caledonian. Coincidentally the Grassmarket brewery was built on top of the Crawley Pipe which brought water into the town. That little brown wooden door you can see to the left of the gateway gives access to the conduit in which the pipe runs.
Holding steady at number 12, brothers Thomas & James Bernard opened the New Edinburgh Brewery on Robertson Avenue in Gorgie in 1888. For obvious reasons the firm used a St. Bernard dog as its mascot and logo (a Saint that has a local connection too), except with a bottle of their beer around its neck instead of a flask of brandy. They were bought up by the industry giant Scottish Brewers in 1960 who shut them down in order to reduce the competition and industry over-capacity.
At 11, the Edinburgh United Breweries of 1889. This company consolidated the existing smaller brewers of David Nicolsons; Robin, McMillans; Dishers and George Ritchies. The Robin, McMillans site at the Summerhall was demolished to make way for the new buildings of the Royal Dick Veterinary School, Dishers’ facilities were sold to rivals Aitchisons, and brewing was consolidated at Nicolson’s Palace Brewery at Abbeyhill and Ritchie’s Bell’s Brewery at the Pleasance. EUB’s remaining assets were acquired by Jeffrey’s in 1935 after what was (at that point) the UK’s largest tax duty scandal; the firm had been brewing off the record out of hours for years and avoiding taxation.
Sneaking in at number 10, the Craigmillar No. 1 Brewery was opened in 1891 by the firm of William Murray & Co. Murrays were an old, established brewer in the town of Jedburgh at the Caledonian Brewery but Mr Murray and his Wife died on the same evening on Wednesday 6th January 1886 leaving no living partner to take the firm on. The business was sold and its new owners relocated it to just outside the (then) city boundary at Craigmillar in 1890, where transport links were good, as was the water, and land was plentiful. This was the first brewer to locate to what would become a hotspot of this industry in this district. This operation was bought by United Breweries in 1960 and closed in 1963 by which time they were United Caledonian.
Holding steady at number 9, Drybrough’s were one of the bigger Edinburgh brewers. They were long established on the North Back of the Canongate but followed the lead of Murrays and joined them in the Craigmillar suburb in 1892 at the Duddingston Brewery. They were bought out by the firm of Watney Mann in 1965 as the big English brewers moved north of the border to expand into the Scottish market and were closed by Allied Lyons in 1987. Most of the brewery buildings remain here, in various uses as workshops, storage and offices .
A new entrant at 8, Daniel Bernard was a son of the T. & J. Bernard family, but fell out with the other partners in that business in 1889 in an acrimonious dispute that ended up in him leaving the firm and taking them to court. He set himself up in business in the Canongate as Bernards Ltd, and moved to a site in the Damhead area of Gorgie in 1893 where there were some good wells, just down the road from the family’s New Edinburgh site. When Daniel died in 1901, there was nobody to take it over. It was used for a while as a distillery before pharmaceutical company T. & H. Smith of Canonmills moved there in stages between 1904-1908. It is still in use for those purposes by their successor company.
At number 7, Pattisons were a big new name in the Leith whisky distilling, blending and bottling industry. Formed from the dairy of Pattison, Elder & Co., they were also the sole Scottish agent for St. Anne’s Well beer from Barnstable in Exeter and decided to enter the brewing market for themselves. This they did in 1896 at Craigmillar, the third such operation in the district. They were known for lavish spending on facilities, advertising and their directors personal lives. But their empire was built too quickly and built on sand; sand sitting atop a huge financial bubble which collapsed in spectacular stile 1899, bringing down much of the Scotch whisky industry with it. The Pattison brothers ended up in court for mixing cheap grain whisky with malt and passing it off as mature malt to increase their profits and ended up in jail. Their brewery assets were taken over by Robert Deuchar, a name now associated with Edinburgh brewing but actually from the northeast of England. Deuchars were closed by Scottish & Newcastle in 1961.
Up one at 6, Somerville’s joined the growing brewing suburb at Craigmillar in 1897 when they opened the North British Brewery. Messrs. John Somerville & Co. were an established wine and spirits merchant on Quality Street in Leith who amalgamated with Blyth & Cameron, a company formed that same year by business partners of Somerville to build the new brewery at Craigmillar. The consolidated firm was known as John Somerville & Co. Ltd. Neighbouring Murray’s took it over as the Craigmillar No. 2 in 1922 and when United Breweries took over Murrays in 1960 they quickly shut it down.
We’re in the top 5 territory now. Robert Deuchar (whose name would later be given to that pioneer India Pale Ale of the 1980s real ale revival in Edinburgh) built their own premises at Craigmillar in 1899 to complement those they had recently taken over from Pattisons. Deuchar is an old Scottish family name from Lauderdale in the Borders, but their brewery was established in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1888. They made the move up the railway to Edinburgh when they bought Pattisons and would transfer all their brewing operations north in 1920, but kept their tied public houses in the northeast of England. They were bought by Newcastle Brewery in 1954 and closed by that firm’s successor, Scottish & Newcastle, in 1961.
Straight in at number 4; T. Y. Paterson & Co. opened the Pentland Brewery, the smallest of the Craigmillar breweries, in 1898. Thomas Yule Paterson was a brewer and maltster established in Glasgow’s Bridgeton in 1884 who decided to move to Edinburgh when the advantages of the Craigmillar location became obvious. They were bought out by Edinburgh brewer Aitkens in 1936 and the site was used for other purposes thereafter. Only the gates remain now.
Another entry for Maclachlans in at 3. They moved from the Grassmarket to Duddingston (a bigger site, a more modern brewery and a rail connection beckoned) in 1901 at the New Castle Brewery. In 1960 the company were bought by Glasgow’s Tennent’s, a move which made sense as Maclachlan’s main market was in that city (as was their head office). But this was a period of rapid industry consolidation and Tennent’s in turn was in turn taken over by London’s Charrington United in 1963. A further reorganisation took place, with Charrington merging their Scottish subsidiaries – United Caledonian – with Tennent’s to form Tennent Caledonian. But it did not end there; in 1967 Charrington merged with Bass of Burton-upon-Trent to form Bass Charrington, under whose ownership the New Castle was shut down, Edinburgh operations of Tennent Caledonian were instead concentrated at Jeffrey’s former New Heriot Brewery in Roseburn
At number 2, W. & J. Raeburn were the last to open a brewery at Craigmillar, in 1901. Raeburn’s Brewery relocated from Merchant Street off the Cowgate in the Old Town where they had brewed since 1863. They were bought over by Robert (not William!) Youngers in 1913. They in turn sold it to the Brewer’s Food Supply Company of Fountainbridge in 1919, formed by a syndicate of Edinburgh brewers. They turned it over to dry waste brewers malt, enriched with surplus yeast, for use as cattle and poultry feed. The Inland Revenue took exception to the missed tax potential of turning a waste product into a commodity and took them to court, but lost. The War Office requisitioned the site over in 1939 to produce industrial yeast. It was returned to the BFSC and later found its way into the Scotish & Newcastle empire and the site seems to have closed around 1975.
And no surprises and still at no. 1, for the umpteenth year in a row since 1973, Scottish & Newcastle built the then ultra-modern Fountain Brewery in that year to replace the older William McEwan brewery of the same name on the other side of the road. S&N dominated the Scottish brewing scene and, along with the big English brewer, bought it up bit by bit then slowly tried to kill it. They very nearly almost did.
The graph below charts the rise and fall of the brewing industry in Edinburgh – note there would have been many more brewers operating prior to 1800, but small concerns rather than on an industrial scale. Treat the earlier end of the timeline with caution therefore. It can be seen that by numbers alone, the 1890s were the peak but there was a long, slow decline thereafter, with things falling off a cliff after the 1950s.
It’s worth noting too that many of these were, even by the standard of the day, relatively small concerns and overall production would actually have increased into the 1960s even though numbers were dropping due to modernisation of the larger breweries on the periphery of the city and closure of older, smaller, less-efficient city-centre sites.
If you look in the right places, it’s not hard to find the evidence of many of those old breweries not already covered in this post. Alexander Melvin’s at the Boroughloch Brewery has surviving outer walls and buildings, with tenement flats long ago built within its courtyard. If you get a chance to see it, the former brewery office off of Boroughloch Lane has a cracking Melvin’s frosted glass window still in place.
Robert Younger , one of the three Youngers of Scottish brewing, brewed at St. Ann’s in Abbeyhill. Their brewery site was converted into sheltered housing, with some of the original buildings preserved. Look out for the RY monogram above the former office door on Abbeyhill.
Archibald Campbell, Hope & King were an ancient name in brewing and distilling, they brewed at the Argyle Brewery off of Chambers Street, but which was at one time Argyle Square. They were one of the last old surviving city centre brewers when they were closed in 1970 by their new English owners, Whitebread. Many of the buildings have now been incorporated into the University of Edinburgh.
Someone later built the King’s Theatre on top of it, but Taylor, Macleod & Co. brewed on the old site of Drumdryan House at the Drumdryan Brewery, an old placename that you can still find in a neighbouring street. Drumdryan comes from the Gaelic – Druim drioghion – a ridge covered in thorn bushes, describing the local topography at one time. Interestingly the nearby street Thorniebauk comes from Scots and means exactly the same, also called Brierybauk at one time.
Steel, Coulson & Co. brewed at the Croft-an-Righ Brewery at Abbeyhill, next door to Robert Younger’s at St. Ann’s. Croft-an-Righ, named for the adjacent old house, at first glance seems an ovbvious Gaelic name meaning “King’s field” but is actually romantic corruption of an older Scots name, Croft Angry – with a possible German root. Some of the buildings were preserved and are in use by Historic Environment Scotland as workshops. These are called St. Ann’s, despite note being on the St. Ann’s brewery site, as St. Ann’s Yards is an even older placename for this area.
Charles Blair started brewing in the Canongate around 1886 at a site known as the Craigwell and within a few years it was rebuilt and expanded into a model Victorian brewery; the Craigend Brewery. In 1898, Blair combined with his relatives James and Charles Blair who brewerd in Parkhead in Glasgow and with James Gordon, a wine merchant in that city, to form Gordon & Blair Ltd. The firm was taken over by local firm Mackay’s in 1955 and closed before 1963 when the latter were bought by Watney Mann. It was used as a cash & carry warehouse before being sympathtically convereted into flats in 1986.
Thomas Carmichael’s Balmoral Brewery was on what is now Calton Road but was then the North Back of Canongate. This place appears to have always struggled financially (apparently due to water supply problems) and the site was used principally for its maltings or sublet to other brewers before being bought by Charles Blair in 1895 for use as the maltings for the Craigwell over the road.
And lastly, until recently you could still see the ground storey of the Calton Hill Brewery on Calton Road in use as a rental car garage. The brewery went through a variety of ownerships, apparently founded in the first half of the 19th century by John Muir & sons before it too was taken over by Charles Blair in around 1890 to be incorporated with the Craigwell. The remains were demolished around 2019 to be replaced by student flats.
In terms of numbers and production, Edinburgh was second only to Burton-on-Trent as the Empire’s second city of brewing. Most cities had breweries but to serve their local market, Edinburgh was notable as serving not just the whole country but also world. The McEwan’s logo, before the recognisable Laughing Cavalier, was a self-confident declaration of the Globe being supported by the strong hand of the Union Flag and the Royal Standard. This was as a result of the importance to McEwan’s business of export and military sales.
Long story short. Don’t let your local paper fool you into believing things about the history of brewing in Edinburgh!
Footnote. My personal ambivalence towards S&N is sincere; I believe they were a good company who lost their way and lost sight of what they did, and tried to grow fat by eating themselves; in the end nothing much was left worth mourning. I also have absolutely nothing against Innis & Gunn. Personally I think their beers taste of a mix of soap and marshmallows, but I also really like Tennent’s lager so I’m no authority on the matter of what “good beer” tastes like.
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[…] and was a relation through marriage to the George Younger brewing family. He was also the nephew of John and David Jeffrey who brewed at the Heriot Brewery in the Grassmarket, where he learned the craft of brewing and business. He had tried unsuccessfully to find a going […]
[…] and was a relation through marriage to the George Younger brewing family. He was also the nephew of John and David Jeffrey who brewed at the Heriot Brewery in the Grassmarket, where he learned the craft of brewing and business. He had tried unsuccessfully to find a going […]