HISTORY OF THE DISTILLERY
1929-1945
A return to older ways
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HISTORY OF THE DISTILLERY
1929-1945
A return to older ways
A return to older ways was dictated in part by events elsewhere. The General Strike of 1926 had shaken business confidence severely and there had been a marked slackening of consumer demand, a situation that was to be repeated with more disastrous results for Glenmorangie after the collapse of the American stock market in October 1929 and the beginning of the first great global recession. In 1929 in Tain, however, there seemed to be no reason to fear for the future and the men who would formerly have been paid off for the duration of the silent season stayed on to carry our repair work on the upper dam and just before malting resumed, carried out cleaning and repair work at the springs up at Tarlogie. A change in manager also marked the change in ownership, Gordon Smart replacing his father Alexander in 1921. It is hard to tell, but it may have been the intention that Gordon was to be the "modern" manager, forward looking into the brave new world of post 1918 whereas his father represented a link backwards to the Victorian Age and the old independent distillery.
This confidence in the future of the company was to take a severe battering over the next few years. At first there was no immediate sign of problems: in January 1930 the team stood at seventeen strong and production was holding steady. The silent season of 1930 passed normally, all the summer lay offs being re-employed in the autumn, but the company registers show that the level of production was already being restricted as the recession began to bite in Britain. When it finally hit Glenmorangie, it was a nearly a killing blow. Four men from the maltbarns were laid off in January 1931 and three stillmen went in April to be followed by two more in May. Production had ceased at the beginning of March and it was not to be resumed until November 1936. Once again the distillery was being run on a care and maintenance basis, with George Ross, John Bett and the carter Davie Cowie attending to cooperage jobs and supervising the bonds, with Mr Smart and his secretary in the office. Even the ending of American prohibition in 1933 did not give the immediate shot in the arm they had expected, for the distilleries preferred to sell from the bonds rather than risk restarting production until the recovery proved to be permanent and not just false spring.
It was not until the summer of 1936 that Glenmorangie increased its staff once more. Through the autumn of 1936 men were recruited into the maltbarns, malting resuming in October with the first new mash being made on 25th November. Recovery was dramatic. Within weeks consumption had broken through the pre-Depression levels and peaked at about 950 bushels of malt per mash as the men worked round the clock to rebuild the depleted stocks. After a short silent season in 1937 consumption was to continue to rise, breaking the 1000 bushel mark by the end of November. By this time, local producers could no longer supply an adequate amount of good, high quality barley at competitive prices and seeking to keep costs down after the ravages of the early 1930s, new sources were sought abroad. From then on experimental barleys were tried, most coming from Australia and North Western India (Karachi in modern Pakistan). With these guaranteed to buoy it up, production continued at unprecedented levels until the end of 1939 when the recovering trade was dealt another severe blow: the Second World War begun.
The outbreak of war had an immediate effect on the distillery, three men who had been in the reserves being called up at the beginning of September. Production of whisky ceased at the beginning of the 1941 silent season and did not resume until autumn 1944, but work at the distillery was not cut back in the same way as it had been in the Depression years, for at least malting continued (mainly to supply the vinegar industry) and whisky continued to be released from the bonds, albeit in greatly reduced quantities. Indeed, one of the men serving in the army was asked to come in to help out in the barns and bonds when he was home on leave in 1942. Nevertheless, it was under George Ross’s watchful eye that cooperage work and the steady release of stock from the bonds continued, for he was one of the few old hands on whom the distillery could still rely.
As in the First War, recruits were billeted for short periods at the distillery while training out on the Morrich More, but this did not interfere with life at Glenmorangie any more than it had between 1914 and 1918. Indeed, as the naval base at Invergordon was much less important in the Second War than it had been in the First, there were many fewer military personnel in the area until 1943-44 when the coasts towards Cadboll and Ballintore were used for D-Day practice landings. This caused major disruption in the whole area as the coastal villages were evacuated for the duration of the exercises, their inhabitants being moved in to temporary accommodation in and around Tain and Kildary.
During the war, Tarlogie House became something of a local entertainment centre under its lady of the house, Mrs McLeod. She was an energetic supporter of the Red Cross and organised local activities to entertain the servicemen based in the district around Tain, usually dances or whist drive which, considering that there was not much else to do locally, were very well attended. She also organised the local Red Cross volunteers, mainly local girls including Alice Ross, into groups who would collect sphagnum moss on the moors around Tarlogie, dry it and clean it and pack it into bundles for conversion into wound dressings.
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