Glenury Royal Distillery
Broomhill Road, Stonehaven
Kincardineshire AB39 2PY
Owner: Diageo
Creation date: 1825
The distillery was founded in 1824 by Captain Robert Barclay and had to face hard times from the very beginning. A few weeks after starting production, a fire destroyed the kiln, parts of the grain loft, malting floors and stocks of barley and malt. This happened on 20th op April 1825. Another disaster happened two weeks later, when a distillery worker, James Clark fell into the boiler and did not survive. The whole energy of the founder of the distillery, Robert Barclay was needed for the distillery to continue its activities. And Robert was an energic man indeed. He was the first man to run 1000 miles in 1000 hours and was inducted into the Scottish Sports Hall of fame for this exploit. The fact king William IV authorized the distillery to add "Royal" to its name in 1835 is also due to the personality of Robert Barclay.
Robert died in 1854 and the distillery was put up for auction 3 or 4 years later. It was acquired by William Richie, and his family remained owner of it until 1936. It is however not really clear who was the actual owner, as it was sold in 1936 by Lord Stonehaven after a decade without production, form 1928 to 1937. Probably the Richies were leasing it from him.
The Glenury Distillery Company bought the distillery. Joseph William Hobbs was an important member of the company, and 2 years later, the distillery was transfered to another group, belowing to the same Mr Hobbs: the "Associated Scottish Distillers (ASD)" . In 1940, ASD was acquired by American National Distilleries, and later, in 1953 the latter was acquired by DCL which would later become Diageo.
Important refurbishing works were done in 1965. The number of stills was doubled, from 2 to 4.
Malting production at the distillery was stopped in 1968 and the distillery was mothballed on 31th May 1985. The decision to cease definitely production of whisky was taken in 1992, and the buildings were sold to an estate company. The building was partly rebuild in appartments.
The whisky from that distillery is rare now, and is still available at some independent bottlers. The whisky of Glenury was also sold in the Rare Malt series, and DIageo marketed recently a 36 years old "Special Release".
