History

40m below your feet here at the Well House are extensive copper mine workings dating from the
1600’s or even earlier. The miners knew about the mineral water that seeped through the rocks down
below. In fact, that is why they spent a small fortune digging a drainage tunnel in 1761 from here all
the way out to the carse where Henderson Street now is.

“Airthrey Well, two miles north of Stirling, flows from a mountain, where is a copper mine, with
some mixture of gold; the water is very cold, and being tinctured with the minerals it flows through,
is of use against outward distempers.” Daniel Defoe 1761

Following the mine’s closure in 1807 the landowner of Airthrey estate, Lord Robert Abercromby
decided to have the mineral water tested with a view to selling it. In 1820 the results came back and it
was seen as far superior to the local Dunblane mineral water which had only just recently been found
in 1813. Accounts suggest that the water even surpassed English Spa towns in its effectiveness at
curing ailments.

Following this initial success in 1820 Abercromby set about bringing the mineral water up one of the
mine’s abandoned shafts. He devised a windlass type system with a pony driving a whim gin over the
shaft for hauling up buckets of water. A girl was tasked to come up at 4am each morning to heat the
copper kettles for the water, which was sold on the site.

By 1821 trade was doing good so Abercromby built the Well House over the shaft and installed 2
forced pumping engines at the bottom of the shaft to pump the water to the surface. Initially these
brought water from the collecting cisterns at 2 springs in earthen pipes to stone troughs below the
shaft. By 1826 this had increased to 6 springs . Abercromby paid Stevenson & Bald - Engineers to
line the tunnel leading up to the springs with brick. The springs were all connected together for
gathering the mineral waters and now ran in lead piping to a lead cistern by the pumps. The water
was pumped to the Well House in another lead pipe into a large ceramic cistern. The water again
would be heated in large copper kettles.

“At Airthrey there are six springs containing, all of them, the same saline constituents, but differing a
good deal in their relative strengths. The water of them all is transparent and colourless, and without
any perceptible smell. The taste is sensibly bitter and unpleasant.”

By the mid 1800’s Airthrey Mineral water was so famous 30,00 people were visiting each year
meaning the small village of Bridge of Allan was struggling to cope with these extra visitors. The
health giving properties of Airthrey mineral springs were publicised far and wide, leading to the rapid
development of the town with hotels on Henderson Street and large magnificent town houses. The
Well House was increased in size to include a cottage for the Well-keeper and a separate sale room.
In 1861 further expansion took place firstly with the building which is now the restaurant Next Chapter
which was the sale room and baths etc. The Well House then became solely a pump house.
In 2019 a small group of Volunteers with a keen interest in industrial archaeology and cave
exploration took on the difficult but not insurmountable task of restoring the Well House. They have
descended the 120 feet shaft and surveyed and photographed the original mineral springs built in
1820.