Hotels near the Verdant Works

Winner of the European Industrial Museum of the Year award, Dundee's Verdant Works recaptures the life and times of the city's mercantile and industrial heritage. The former jute mill transformed the raw product imported from colonial India into a myriad of products and brought wealth from textiles to the Scottish town.

Dundee became the world centre for the manufacture of jute, and Verdant Works boasts original working machinery, backed up by the latest exhibits and technology to recreate the frenetic life of the factory through computer displays and hands-on interactive exhibits.

Visitors can discover the background from the Juteopolis film show, the social implications of the jute business taking off in the city and what happened when the industry fell into decline.

Given the powerful Scottish burns, it was not surprising that Dundee became a centre for industry from the 1790s, the water generating the steam engines that powered the mills. High Mill of Verdant Works was built in 1833 for David Lindsay, merchant and flaxspinner. Twenty years later the mill, under the ownership of John Ewan, had three steam engines driving 70 power looms with 2800 spindles, operated by a workforce of 500.

After Ewan's retirement in 1880 the mill diversified and the family firm was referred to as merchants not manufacturers. Over 100 years later the Dundee Heritage Trust managed to purchase the mill as a building to house various artefacts from the town's industrial heritage. It was opened to the public in September 1996, with a second phase opened exactly a year later by the Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, subsequently winning many heritage and tourist awards.