John Moubray (or Mowbray) was born at Letham Farm, Inverkeithing, in 1774, a few months after his father died. His early years were spent with his mother's family close to the Moor of Muckhart, at the foot of the Ochil Hills. That part of Scotland was then a sparsely populated wilderness, where the young Moubray had a somewhat Spartan upbringing. Such an experience left its mark, and fired him, in later life, with a determination to improve the land between that range of hills and the River Forth.
When he grew to manhood John Moubray moved westwards to Cambus, near Alloa, where he started to farm on his own account. His friends thought he was crazy to choose carse-land, but he was confident that he could do something with it. Years afterwards he confessed that it was the difficulty of the task that appealed to him. The spirit of the Moubrays rose to the challenge of the opportunity, and he set out to make things grow and to put Cambus on the agricultural map.
With the farming part of his business in full swing, John decided to branch out, and in 1806 he converted a disused mill in Cambus, situated on the banks of the River Devon close to where it meets the Forth, into a malt distillery.
In 1834, he was awarded the Highland and Agricultural Society's Gold Medal for reclaiming the desolate, mossy area known as the Moor of Muckhart. In a three year period he had overseen the building of nine miles of stone dykes, nine miles of hedges, and drains, and had 100 acres of land trenched. This property was afterwards named by him as Naemoor, where he built his mansion house.
Cambus Distillery
From it's start in 1806, John ran the distillery with reasonable returns, using the draff and other by-products to feed the cows on his farm.
1813 - John Moubray registers the distillery business.
1823 - John buys the distillery land and surrounding area.
1835 - he becomes a co-partner in the Alloa Coal Company.
Now in a position to secure cheap coal supplies to his distillery, in 1836 he installed two Stein patent stills to distil grain whisky.
1837 - John Moubray dies.
1842 - James Moubray, John's son, takes over the business, as James Moubray & Co.
1843 - James Moubray & Co. is dissovled, having become bankrupt, and the distillery is passed on to Robert Moubray, John's second son.
1851 - Robert modernises the distillery with the addition of a Coffey still, (licence issued 11 march 1851) giving a production boost of 250 gallons per hour. The expansion meant that Cambus was now one of the largest grain distilleries in Scotland.
1856 - To safeguard future operations during a period of fluctuating demand for grain whisky, six of the largest grain distillers in the Lowlands agreed to divide up the market between them for a year. Robert Moubray takes a 10.5% share for Cambus.
1877 - Cambus Distillery becomes one of the founding companies of the Distillers Company Limited (DCL).
1882 - DCL acquires the Old Cambus Brewery and expands the distillery.
1885 - The distillery was recorded by the famed brewing and distilling historian Alfred Bernard, who said that the ‘rail sidings ran to all the principal warehouses’ and that 'the six huge warehouses on an eight acre site held some 17,000 casks containing 1.4 million gallons', he also notes that the site had seven Excise officers.
During the ‘What is Whisky?’ trials at the turn of the 20th century, when malt distillers began an uprising against the use of the term ‘whisky’ to describe grain spirit, DCL - which operated several grain distilleries - used Cambus to sway public opinion in their favour.
In 1906 it placed a front-page advertisement for Cambus Pure Grain Whisky, which had been aged for around seven years, in The Daily Mail to ‘give the public the opportunity of judging for themselves what a pure patent-still grain whisky was like’. Cambus Pure Grain Whisky was described as ‘the whisky with an individuality - notably different to all others in peculiar delicacy and charm of flavour - mild and mellow. Not a headache in a gallon.’
The malt distillers lost their case, when the 1908 Royal Commission ruled that grain whisky was in fact whisky.
1914 - A fire destroys most of the distillery, and the site was closed until 1937.
1937 - The distillery is reopened at the cost of £275,000, only to close again at the outbreak of World War II.
1944 - Cambus Distillery re-opens.
1952 - With market demand rising, a gin rectification plant was installed, along with a CO2 processing plant in the following year.
1964 - Cambus became the first distillery to have a by-products plant on site.
1966 - Transferred to Scottish Grain Distillers Ltd. (SGD)
1982 - By-products plant is expanded into a full dark grains plant following the purchase of the closed North of Scotland grain distillery situated next door.
1993 - Licensed to United Malt & Grain Distillers Ltd. (UMGD)
1993 - Cambus Distillery closes once again. Its plant was removed and the site transformed into a cask filling operation and warehouses.
2011 - The former Cambus Distillery site is re-modelled as a cooperage, transferring the coopering operations from nearby Carsebridge Distillery in Alloa which had long closed. This was possible because the Cambus site adjoins Diageo's Blackgrange Whisky Bond, which opened in the 1960s and stretches from Cambus in Clackmannanshire, almost one and a half miles towards Manor Powis in Stirlingshire.
References
Scotchwhisky.com
Whiskipedia
Wormtub.com
One Hundred Years in Coal - The History of the Alloa Coal Company
Muckhart Clackmannanshire - An Illustrated History of the Parish