"Certainly the oldest building in Scotland, and possibly in Britain, still continuously used for commercial purposes."

Part I - Origins of The Vaults

Beneath the Society's commodious offices in Leith lie four vaulted cellars, used since time immemorial for the storage of wine. Tradition has it that they were built before 1200, and were either granted to the Abbey of Holyrood on its foundation in 1143, or built by the monks soon after. I repeated this tradition in the article about the Vintners Room which appeared in the last Newsletter, and was helpfully corrected by a Member, Neil Hynd, who pointed out that the style of the vaulting does not match the (Romanesque) style employed at this early date. However, the Vaults were certainly in existence by 1439 when 'the grete volute of Villiam Logane' is mentioned in a charter by Patrick, Abbot of Holyrood. This 'William Logan' was the son [possibly grandson] of Sir Robert Logan of Restalrig, Lord High Admiral of Scotland, and son in law of King Robert II, who died in Spain in 1329 while accompanying Robert Bruce's heart to the Holy Land.

By this time, the wine trade with Bordeaux was well established. The monks of Holyrood not only imported their own wines, but had a right to dues on the importation of wine coming into the Port of Leith, and a large measure of control in its distribution. The Vaults provided them with spacious cellarage.

Their location was well chosen. Until the 17th century, the Water of Leith was navigable up to the stone bridge, and the basin below the bridge was considerably broader. This has now been filled in, but for a long time after they were built the Vaults stood as close to the wharves as possible: their earthen floors are only fractionally higher than the high-water mark of the Forth's spring tides.

Being sub-terranean, they were spared the cruel destruction of Leith perpetrated by the Earl of Hertford in 1544, on the instructions of Henry VIII, and some forty years later a single storey building was erected above them, made of sea-boulders cemented with hot lime. This survives today, and part of it houses the bar of the Vintner's Room Restaurant.

At the Reformation, the Vaults passed into the ownership of the Vintners' Guild of Edinburgh. The 'Vintners' Room' was known as the 'Sale Room': wines which had been landed at the Port were sampled here by members of the Guild and purchased if approved. The price itself was fixed by the Edinburgh Town Council: the President of the Guild bought it if he approved the quality at that price, but he could not make an alternative offer. Once purchased, the casks were carted up to Edinburgh and sold on draught, the citizens filling their own bottles and jugs. This custom continued into the eighteenth century, when containers were filled for sixpence, with little concern for capacity.

In 1649, General Monck quartered his (Cromwellian) troops in the Vaults, paying 42 Scots pounds in annual rent, according to the Edinburgh Town Treasurer's records for that year, and in 1682 a large stone warehouse was built on the site, incorporating the earlier Vinters' premises.

In about 1739, the Vintners Room itself was opulently decorated with stucco by Thomas Clayton, who had recently arrived from England and set up his workshop in Leith.

It is possible that this was Clayton's first Scottish commission, and it provided him with a good opportunity to demonstrate his skills to those who came to the Vaults to buy wine. The plasterwork is charmingly appropriate to its purpose: gambolling putti drink wine beneath vines in a superb panel above the fireplace (which may originally have been coloured, like a 3-D painting), while the auctioneer's niche is surmounted by a scallop shell.

By 1740 Clayton was working with William Adam on The Drum for Lord Somerville, and the latter introduced him to the Duke of Hamilton, for whom he did some work at Holyroodhouse (now destroyed) and at Chatelherault.

Part II - History of the present building

The present building known as 'The Vaults' was erected by the Vintners' Guild of Edinburgh in 1682 - the [Pevsner] Guide to the Buildings of Scotland describes it as ' a rubble warehouse', although this is inaccurate since the stone is dressed. A further storey (the fourth) was added in 1785, which included a central gable and pan-tiled roof. Both these unusual features are still in place.

In 1753, the whole building was leased to one James Thomson, Wine Merchant. Thomson's father had married into the wine trade in 1698 and established himself in Thomson's Court, off the Grassmarket in the Old Town of Edinburgh. His descendants controlled the business for three generations. In 1820 the firm became known as J.G. Thomson & Company after its senior partner, James Gibson Thomson, who was Treasurer of the City of Edinburgh during the 1840s by which time his family business was the preeminent wine merchants in Scotland. In 1875, the year before he retired, J.G. Thomson took James Anderson, and the Usher brothers John (later Sir John) and Andrew Usher as partners. The latter is credited with being the first whisky blender, as the term is understood today, and he also built and gifted the Usher Hall to the City of Edinburgh in 1900.

Thereafter the firm was directed by three generations of Andersons. It became a public company in 1905, and by the 1930s was supplying wines to most of the top hotels in Scotland. By this time J.G. Thomson & Co was one of the country's leading independent whisky blenders, with a prosperous overseas trade.

After World War II many private hotels amalgamated into larger 'chains' or were acquired by breweries. This effectively removed Thomson's principal outlets, and, like many other wines and spirits firms (notably Chas. Mackinlay & Co), the company had no alternative but to become the wine division of a brewery. In 1960 it was bought by Charrington United Breweries Ltd. Three years later C.U.B. acquired Tennents, and in 1966 J.G. Thomson became a subsidiary of Tennent Caledonian.

J.G. Thomson at the Vaults

Until 1983 J.G. Thomson continued to trade from their spacious premises at their famous address. By the time of the company's 250th anniversary, the front of the Vaults had been embellished with 'J.G. THOMSON & Co. LIMITED 1709-1959, THE VAULTS, LEITH' in large letters. Less decorative was the single storey bottling hall which filled the carpark at the front of lefthand side of the building (from the front), the unsightly concrete lift tower above it and the open cast-iron fire escape rising from the steps leading to what are now the Society's premises. These have since been removed.

By the early 1960s Thomsons was a shadow of what it had once been. The last bottlings were done at The Vaults in 1964, and the old building became no more than a warehouse with offices. By the late 1970s the top two storeys were unsafe and unusable. Tennents Caledonian resolved to re-establish the company as a serious wines & spirits wholesaler and erected new purpose-built premises, including a bonded warehouse, on London Road in Glasgow, from where the company trades to this day.

This was in 1983. At the same time the Vaults complex - in dire condition - was sold to an unusual consortium, made up of Philip Hills (tax consultant), Russell Hunter (actor), Ben Tindall (architect), W. Gordon Smith (writer) and David Alison (contractor) for £40,000.

Readers with knowledge of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society will recognise its founding fathers among these names, and the old building was acquired specifically to provide the nascent Society with premises, and to establish a whisky museum.

Part III - The Society and The Vaults

The concluding part of "The True History of the Vaults" is still to come.