Plans for Stirling’s first distillery given green light

Stirling Gin has announced that it has been given planning permission to open the Scottish city’s first distillery on the site of a Victorian blacksmiths.

‘The Old Smiddy’ due to be converted into Stirling’s first distillery.

Owners of Stirling Gin, husband and wife June and Cameron McCann, announced last week that they had been granted permission to convert a former blacksmiths in the Castlehill area of Stirling into a distillery and visitor’s centre.

At various times, the building has been a church meeting hall, a radio repair shop and a blacksmiths.

Co-owner Cameron McCann said: “To get the final green-light from Stirling Council Planning Department that we can proceed with our plans for The Old Smiddy is just the best news possible to start the New Year with, no doubt about it.

“So I’d like to thank Stirling Council Planning Department for processing our application so efficiently and now we can look forward to 2018 and creating something really special in our home city that will also hopefully have a positive impact on the area.

“The Castlehill area is such an historic part of Stirling and I guess it’s maybe appropriate that we are going to be opening up the first ever distillery in the city up there.

“Everyone at Stirling Gin is committed to making sure we become an integral part of the business community and hopefully a force for good in all the other aspects of the community we want to get involved in and support”.

The McCanns have also enlisted the help of local historian Robin Hawthorn who has found that the earliest known reference to a building on the site appears to show that it was part of King James V’s stables.

Stirling Gin was founded in 2015, produced in a tiny copper pot still in the McCann’s kitchen.

The distillery is expected to be completed this summer and is expected to cost £150,000, bringing up to eight new jobs to the area.