November 1916 Canal Basin The Highland Railway Company

 

My examination of the 1916 train invoices has reached an intriguing stage. This is the inaugural example that bears the distinctive Canal Basin stamp. This location is situated along the quayside, in proximity to Glen Albyn (see the image below), and would have offered immediate access for boats and heavier loads shipped in from across the country. 

Previously, references have been made to canal loads, which would have been loaded onto the small railway siding situated at the deeper end of the basin and transported up to the vicinity of Glen Albyn. At this location, manual assistance would have been required to move such items, for example, by the local carter, Donald MacDonald, who had worked with Mackinlay & Birnie since the 1890s, and was located on Telford Street; a handy proximity to the sidings. The distillery were still using the carting firm as late as 1917, as this invoice shows.

It seems reasonable to suggest that smaller vessels could have moored in close proximity to Glen Mhor, thus providing a more convenient access point to unload, into what was the backend of the distillery. However, this appears to have been an uncommon occurrence. As boats became larger in order to accommodate heavier loads and offer a more efficient economy of scale, the lower end of the basin (where Glen Mhor was located) was no longer accessible. It is possible that the canal itself was not dredged on a regular basis, or the boats outgrew certain areas of the basin. My previous research has confirmed that there was minimal, if any, traffic arriving at the distillery via the Caledonian Canal approach.

In theory, this invoice will demonstrate the distillery's preparations for the forthcoming year, including the procurement of essential supplies such as coal from Fife, barley from Scotland and other regions, and potentially other sizeable materials. It will be interesting to see what information it can provide, which the transcription below, and remember, given this is 1916, all of this material is destined to Glen Mhor.

1st November

62 bags barley, Avoch (this is a port village on the Black Isle, so local barley)

62 HR sacks, Avoch

2nd November

74 bags barley, Nairn (another nearby village with a harbour)

74 HR sacks, Nairn

1st November

3rd November

6th November

9th November

10th November

Coal shipments from Bowhill in Fife, numbers 5544, 6776, 7058, 36181, 7192, totalling circa 55 tonnes. (we've previously discussed the Bowhill pit in a prior article).

16th November

84 bags barley, Fort George (located across the Moray Firth from Avoch)

84 HR sacks

27 bags barley, Auldearn (a village community a couple miles inland from Nairn)

27 HR sacks

18th November

186 bags barley, Fortrose

186 HR sacks, Fortrose

20th November

80 bags barley, Fortrose

80 HR sacks, Fortrose

16th November

Coal 7118, Bowhill

17th November

Coal 7412, Bowhill 

21st November

Coal 6595 Bowhill

23rd November

Coal 7204, Bowhill

27th November

35 bags barley, Gollanfield (in-between Nairn and Inverness)

35 HR sacks, Gollanfield

28th November

Coal 6744, Bowhill

30th November 

83 bags barley, Munlochy (Black Isle village)

83 HR sacks, Munlochy

The invoice details the landing of in excess of 160 tonnes of raw materials at Muirtown for Glen Mhor, at a cost of just over £4000 in today's money, allowing for inflation. While this may not appear to be a significant sum in the context of the present economic climate, in 1916, this quantity of materials would have equated to approximately four months' wages for a skilled tradesman.

You might also inquire as to the nature of a 'HR sack.' And it would be beneficial to compute its dimensions in comparison to a bag of barley. My ongoing hypothesis is that a HR sack is essentially equivalent to the Highland Railway sack size. This would equate to approximately 48 pounds of barley, which is comparable to a bushel. The train logo was HR and displayed on its freight carriages, an indication you can see below from a HR train that was in operation during this period. My thanks to Transports of Delight for use of the image. 

What's clear is that Glen Mhor sourced a significant portion of its barley from farmers in the Black Isle region. While some of these farmers may have had access to their own sacks or packaging materials, it is plausible that, given the reliance on the railway, empty sacks were widely available and utilised by regular dispatchers. Also, what is a surprise is that the ratio of barley sacks vs HR sacks is 1:1 throughout the whole invoice - what are the chances of that? Unless it was a rule from the Highland Railway that a set proportion of their sacks needed to be included?

From previous research (available in the Documents Section) indicates that Glen Mhor utilised 52% of Scottish barley in 1916, the prior year it was just 39% and 100% Scottish barley in 1914, when the war commenced. This shows the distillery is able to source a substantial quantity of barley when required locally. The season traditionally range from September to August, so this invoice relates to the 1916-1917 season. 

The utilisation of imported barley declined significantly into the 1920s at Glen Mhor, as evidenced by the historical records. By the 1920-1921 season, Scottish barley accounted for 70% of the distillery's barley requirements, coinciding with the highest recorded level of consumption since the distillery's inception. 

The benchmark figure was 11,462 quarters, which allows for the calculation of historical data on the premise that there were 80 quarters in a ton, equating to 143.275 tonnes. In the season under consideration for this invoice, 5,383 quarters (equivalent to 67.28 tonnes) were consumed, of which 2,791 (34.88 tonnes) were local barley.

Fortunately, the Highland Railway Company has provided both the weight in tonnes and hundredweight. In the British Imperial system, which was introduced in 1824 in the UK, one ton is equivalent to 20 hundredweight. 

The invoice for barley and both forms of sacks adds up to a total of 67 tonnes and 6 hundredweight. This figure is in close alignment with the total annual consumption recorded for the season in question. However, when we consider the distinction between local and imported sources, the data does not align at all. This makes me question the reliability of the historical units employed in the calculation of this aspect. It seems very implausible that imported barley was coming in via one of these sources, although it remains a possibility and the understanding that distilling for the new season was already underway and had been for a couple of months. 

It seems worthwhile to suggest that this invoice is not directly related to the prospect of vessels docking at Muirtown Basin. Rather, it appears to concern the use of the short railway known as the 'Muirtown Basin Branch'. This line diverged and provided access to the quayside via a siding, as well as a direct line to the Glen Albyn distillery.

I'm unable to state whether the goods were delivered to the basin and subsequently transported along the short line to Glen Mhor. An alternative hypothesis is that the goods were transported entirely by rail before pulling up at Muirtown, due to the connection with the main line. The only potential flaw in this argument is the absence of any reference to the canal on a previous invoices that also followed this route. This could also be attributed to a miscommunication or a change in administrative procedures for this specific invoice. 

If you asked me to state a preference, then I'd go with the 100% railway transportation, as through my research we've seen that larger boats tended to land at Thornbush during this era.

With only December 1916 remaining to be assessed, I remain hopeful that we can unearth more of these train invoices which were saved from the distillery along with other documents that I've yet to see. They provide a wonderful insight into the traffic associated with a working distillery of the period.