Trainspotting pub turned into whisky bar

A Scottish pub made famous by Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting has been turned into an upmarket whisky bar, marking the disappearance of another of the film’s iconic landmarks.

The Volunteer Arms, known as “The Volley”, was featured in Irvine Welsh’s novel Trainspotting as the pub of choice for drug addicts Renton, Spud, Sickboy and Begbie.

It gained further recognition when the novel was adapted into a film by Danny Boyle in 1996 starring Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle.

The film, which follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s in an economically depressed area of Edinburgh, was ranked as the 10th British film of all time by the British Film Institute.

The pub, which had garnered a reputation for being “rough”, was where Begbie, played by Carlyle, attacked a fellow punter with a snooker cue in the film.

After a £70,000 renovation the pub, now named The Cask & Still, has been transformed into a stylish whisky bar and now boasts a fine ale sommelier, fresh batch gin distilled on-site and prime sushi, as reported by the Edinburgh News. 

Speaking to the paper Ian Pert, of new owners I@G Events, said: “We’ve completely refurbished the interior, and have made quite a few changes to the business. One of the ­biggest differences is that, unlike the Volunteer Arms, we don’t plan on opening from 7am.

“We’ll be keeping more ­normal hours from now on.”