For some time during the 19th century, Millburn was operated as a mill. Rumoured to have been founded in 1807 or perhaps 1805 by a Mr Welsh, the distillery lies on the banks of the Mill Burn, from whence the distillery’s cooling waters flow. The distillery was originally known as the Inverness Distillery and it was officially founded in 1825 by Alexander Macdonald and James Rose, two years after the Excise Act had been passed. Not long after, the distillery went into liquidation and in 1853 it was acquired by David Rose, a corn trader.
In 1876, Millburn went through renovation and was converted to a distillery having been used as a mill for some time. In 1881, David’s son George Rose inherited the distillery and managed it until 1892, at which point it was purchased by Andrew Haig and Co who redesigned the buildings just before the turn of the 20th century. Passing through the hands of Booth’s Distillers Ltd, a gin company, in 1935 they merged with William Sanderson and Co, latterly becoming a part of Distillers Company Ltd before being subsequently transferred to Scottish Malt Distillers, who later became a part of Diageo.
Millburn was sited unfortunately for the transportation links were poor and, following the whisky crisis of the 1980s, the distillery closed in 1985 and was subsequently dismantled. Today, the site is used differently; in 1989 a restaurant was opened in one the buildings, known as ‘The Auld Distillery’, the name later changed to ‘Slice’ and today it is part of the Premier Travel Inn brand.