Verdant Works – Dundee's Jute Mill and Lunch
A few hours, from Dundee station and back.
The route
Verdant Works is a restored 1830s jute mill on the edge of Dundee's city centre, where the story of the city's great industry is told among the machines themselves.
Lunch is in the museum's own café, in the old boiler room, with homemade soup and scones with local jam. It's a lovely morning out on a wet day.
Before you go
Book accommodation nearby
If you are staying over: here are ours nearest where the day starts and ends.
The day
Dundee
An unhurried morning inside an old mill, following the jute from the bale to the cloth, then a warming bowl of soup without stepping back out into the weather.
About three and a half hours
Verdant Works
An attraction
It's a 16-minute walk west from the station, through the West Port, to Verdant Works on West Henderson's Wynd. Its High Mill was built in 1833 for a flax spinner, and in Dundee's jute years women outnumbered men in the mills three to one. The galleries follow the fibre from the raw bale to the finished cloth, and volunteers run some of the old machines when they're in, so ask at the desk when they next start up. Give it about two hours. It opens Monday to Saturday from 10am and Sunday from 11am, until 5pm, and from November to March it's shut on Mondays and Tuesdays. A pass is £13 on off-peak weekdays or £15 any day at the time of writing, and either lets you back in for a year; children up to 16 go free with a paying adult. The cobbled courtyard at the gate needs a little care, but there are ramps inside, a lift to the first floor and wheelchairs to borrow. If you come by car, the museum's own car park is behind it on Miln Street and free for visitors: register your car at reception.
16 min on foot
Verdant Works Café
Lunch
Lunch is in the museum's café, in the old boiler room, so there's no walk and no stepping back out into the weather. It serves homemade soup, light lunches and scones with Heather Hills jam, and there are tables out in the courtyard on a sunny day. Dogs are welcome in the café, though only assistance dogs are allowed in the museum. Then it's a 16-minute walk back to the station.
If it rains
The museum and the café, in the old boiler room, are both indoors: on a wet day only the 16-minute walks to and from the station are out in it.