IT WAS DESIGNED AS A CUNNING "ONE- STOP-SHOP" STILL BY CHEMICAL ENGINEER ALISTAIR CUNNINGHAM AND DRAFTSMAN ARTHUR WARREN IN 1955...

... neither of whom can have been great aesthetes - as a way to create a variety of whisky styles. Key to the design was the ugly thick, column-like neck that could have three extra removable sections inserted for flexibility imitating the effect of different still “neck” lengths.

One section housed three rectifying plates, or baffles, that increased or decreased the reflux action. The plates, like Roman blinds, could be opened in varying degrees from a horizontal to the vertical position.

Correspondingly, the removable neck sections could lengthen or shorten the height of the neck, thus varying the angle of the lyne arm - upward for a slightly lighter whisky, downward for a heavier one. The first Lomond, a 11,600 liter capacity spirit still built by Ramsden, and was installed by 1959 at Inverleven, Glasgow. This was the functional single malt distillery shoe-horned in to a utilitarian red brick building, tucked away in a corner of the huge Dumbarton grain distillery complex, on the confluence of the Clyde and Leven rivers.