Springbank

SPRINGBANK STORY Journey back in time and visit Campbeltown a century ago and you would have been met by an extraordinary sight.

Had you travelled to the ancient Royal Burgh by sea, as your vessel slipped into Campbeltown Loch, squeezing between Macringan's Point and the rocky island of Davaar, the town would have come into clear view: a portrait of sails billowing in the wind, and beyond them a screen of ropes and masts, some 20-odd smoking chimneys each acting as a beacon for an industry for which this small and lonely outpost on the Kintyre peninsula had become a byword. Today those heady days have gone.

The herring fishing fleet which then boasted at least 80 boats has vanished, and the chimneys belonging to distilleries which once made Campbeltown the whisky capital of the world have likewise disappeared. That is with the exception of one, a slender golden thread with the past that has remained unbroken, untarnished even, for two centuries.