So why were there 32 green (and brown and clear) bottles hiding in my wall?
Bathroom renovation disturbs some surprising spirits
When Allan Cameron set about renovating his bathroom, he was thinking about plasterboard, pipes and paint.
By the time he’d finished, he was thinking about 32 bottles of whisky.
The 41- year- old wasn’t being driven to drink by a weekend of DIY, but a former occupant of his house in Giffnock, East Renfrewshire, might have been – almost 100 years ago.
Allan stumbled upon a cache of bottles from last century when removing an internal wall in the bathroom of his family home.
He said: “As soon as the wall was removed, we could see this row of bottles in the cavity between internal and external walls, sitting upright on a brick ledge. There were 32 of them in various sizes.
“When I realised what they were, my initial thought was, ‘I hope these aren’t empty.’
“But sadly none of them contained so much as a dreg. They don’t even smell of whisky.”
The curious collection set Allan wondering how the ancient stash came to be hidden in the wall for so long, and who left them.
The married father-of-three, who is also a doctor, said: “Once I saw all the bottles were empty, I realised that they must have been hidden there by a previous occupant who didn’t want anyone to know about their fondness for a dram.”
The bottles in the stash in the 113- year- old house are all blended whisky, with familiar labels such as Langs, Grants, and Buchanan’s among them, while some bear the name of the Chrystal Bell pub in Glasgow’s Gallowgate.
Allan added: “One of the labels says that it was bottled in 1927, and several others proclaim the manufacturers’ appointment to ‘HM the King and HRH the Prince of Wales’, so these must pre-date the death of George V in 1936, since neither Edward VIII or George VI had sons who were Prince of Wales.
“I suppose this means the bottles were deposited during what we now call the Depression Era. The most interesting part for me is to think about the circumstances that led to these bottles being left there.
“What was Glasgow like at that time? Was the person who hid the bottles a lodger forbidden to drink by an austere landlady, or a householder too proud to put bottles in the dustbin? Were they alcoholic?
“Whisky was more expensive then than it is now in relative terms, and living in a new house in Giffnock with a front and back garden wouldn’t have been cheap either.
“I guess whoever it was, was quite well-to-do but had this dark secret. There’s probably quite a sad story behind it, but one that’s probably lost forever.”
Whisky expert Angus MacRaild, who runs the Old and Rare Whisky Show, said Allan could have been on to a small fortune if the bottles had been full.
Whisky writer Angus said: “It’s always fun when these sorts of stashes are uncovered.
“It’s a shame these bottles weren’t still full and sealed as they’d have contained some very delicious whisky, and been worth a pretty penny, too.”