The photo above is from 2010, when I paid a visit to Lochwinnoch to see the Erskine Curling Club on outside ice on Castle Semple Loch. The loch has seen many bonspiels over the years.

The old Annuals of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club contain much information about the game as played in years past. The editor of the 1895-96 volume thought fit to reprint a rather unusual story from the Winnipeg Daily Tribune, of February 17, 1894. I've set this out below. True, or a piece of romantic fiction? You decide.

Here's the story:

THE BONSPIEL AND BRIDAL. Reminiscences of a Great Game at Lochwinnoch in Olden Times. How a Gallant Curler Won the County Match and the Skip's Daughter.

It was the 25th of January 1892, the anniversary of the birth of the immortal Burns, that a large concourse of curlers, skaters and onlookers, met on the icy bosom of Lochwinnoch. The occasion was the annual bonspiel of the counties of Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. The excellent condition of the ice and weather brought many lovers of winter sport from adjacent towns by rail.

The contest by the chosen rinks, to uphold the honour of their counties, was the centre of attraction. The Renfrewshire rink was skipped by John Ogilvie, better known as the Laird o' Bonnyrig, his opponent being Stuart o' Langholm. For many years these two old chiels had met in friendly contest, with varying success, but, of late years, it had been in favour of Langholm. He was younger than Bonnyrig, and, at this time, had a rink who had never been beaten, and who called themselves the 'Invincibles'. So they prepared for this contest with all the assurance of success.

When everything was ready for play, word was brought to Bonnyrig that his third man, Donald Grant, the blacksmith, had fallen and hurt himself, and could not play. Bonnyrig was dumfounded. Play without Grant was sure defeat, and the old man had intended to retire from the county contests at the end of this game, and was the more anxious to win on that account, that he might retire a victor.

Langholm's men were impatient, and some not very complimentary remarks were made, which stung Bonnyrig to the quick. Just then Dr Graham took Bonnyrig aside and told him of a stranger who would take Grant's place, assuring him that he was a native of the county and a member of the C. C. club, 'and', says Graham, 'I'll guarantee that he'll fill Grant's place to your satisfaction.'

The stranger was introduced to Bonnyrig, and was found to be a likely and determined-looking young fellow. The arrangement being accepted by all parties, the play began. Langholm's rink played as if confident of easy victory, but soon found out that, if they would win, they must play for all that was in them. From the start the stranger showed a knowledge of the game superior to anything they had ever dreamed of; his cool selfpossession, his ability to play the shot that was required, and, above all, his faculty of inspiring confidence in others were such that his rink played a wonderful game.

But Langholm's men were stalwarts, and fought for every shot. Sometimes it was Bonnyrig, sometimes it was Langholm, while the excitement around was intense, and every point gained by either party, was the signal for a noisy demonstration by their supporters. The game was wearing to a close. The last end had come and the last stone at that. The stranger had invariably left the end in good shape for his skip, and now at the last end they were ties, with Bonnyrig with one stone to play.

If he could count one, the game was his. But how to get it was the question. To get it he would have to draw a port with hardly an inch to spare, wick a stone gently, and curl in. 'I'm fear'd o 't,' says the Laird. 'You can do it,' says the stranger. 'Play to that broom, tee weight, and no more. Steady!'

The calm confident tone and influence of the stranger had the desired effect on the Laird, so, with steady nerve and clear eye, he laid the stone as directed. The stranger met it at the sweeping score, and began to sweep it up, watching its every move. He swept accordingly. 'Will it make the port?' is heard on every side. It seems a little slow. And now the stranger gets in his work. His broom is moving so fast you hardly see it. The stone is following, and almost seems to gather speed. The port is reached, and passed. The stone is wick'd just right, and the Laird's stone is on the 'pat lid'. The game is won, and many a time since has the Laird's draw been spoken off as the most wonderful shot ever seen on Lochwinnoch.

And now the fun and noise began. 'Renfrewshire for ever!' Shout after shout went up from the excited crowd, echoed by the Renfrewshire hills, and faintly re-echoed by the distant Ayrshires, as if in mockery. The Laird was carried by his supporters, shoulder high, off the ice, and so would the stranger have been, but he could not be found. He had disappeared in the confusion at the end of the game.

The Laird invited a number of his friends to his house to celebrate his victory, where we will take the liberty of looking at what is going on, a little before he arrives. Out in the kitchen sits Dr Graham with a contented look on his face, enjoying his pipe, while, in the parlour, we find the stranger and the Laird's beautiful and accomplished daughter. This is her birthday, and, just five years ago, when sixteen years of age, the Laird had come home, after being defeated in the county contest by Langholm, and, finding young Gavin Davison, one of the Laird's tenants' sons, in company with his daughter, he ordered the young man off the place, and told him never to come on it again or he would set the dogs on him. Shortly afterwards the youth disappeared, and had not been heard of since. Itwas rumoured he had gone to the North-west.

The young lady did not pine and die, as some love-sick maidens are said to have done in such circumstances, but grew better and prettier than ever. The Laird got her the best education the county could give, and now, it was said, she was the most accomplished and beautiful woman in the county. Many suitors had sought her hand, but she appeared to be in no hurry to marry, and the Laird, who was a kind-hearted, just man, and especially attached to her, seemed to dread the day when she would be taken from his home to adorn that of some one else.

The Laird is heard coming, and the stranger joins the doctor, who has gone out to meet him, who is greatly pleased to see him again.

To tell of the enjoyment that night would take a long time. The Laird's hospitality was unbounded and free to all, being carried out in the good old style. Josh Strathnairn, the best fiddler in the west of Scotland, was there, and never did his old Cremona send out the reels, strathspeys, and jigs with more vim than on that night.

While the enjoyment was at its height, the Laird said to Graham, who was sitting beside him, 'I say, doctor, that 's a fine, smairt-lookin' lad, that, an' a guid curler; I ha'e forgotten his name. What is it, noo?'

'Laird,' says the doctor, 'him an' Maggie's a fine-lookin couple. Jist see how they go through that reel togither.'

'That's a fac', Doctor,' says the Laird, 'but what's his name?'

'Before I tell ye his name, Laird, tak' a guid look at him, an' tell me if ever ye ha'e seen him before?'

'Na, na, Doctor, I dinna think it.'

'Did ever ye order him aff your place, an' threaten to set your dogs on him, if ever he came on't again?'

'Lord preserve me, Doctor, is that Gavin Davison ? Whaur has he been since?'

'He has been in the North-west since he went away. I've watched him ever since. He has behaved well. He has done well, and, after five years' absence, he has come back, on your daughter's birthday, to marry her. She's twenty-one to-day, Laird.'

The Laird's face turned white for a minute. At first something seemed to sting him about the heart. Then, turning slowly to Graham, he said: 'It's fate. Sae bit it be. Graham, is he worthy o' her?'

'Laird,' said Graham, 'if I was not sure that he is worthy o' her I would do all I could to prevent it.'

'Bring them here, Graham.'

Graham brought them to the Laird, who, rising, took Davison's hand, saying, 'Graham has told me who you are and what you are here for. I have his assurance that you are worthy of my daughter, and I consent and ask pardon for my harshness to you five years ago, and only impose one condition, and that is, that you get married tonight when we are celebrating anyway, and that you stay here and take my place in the bonspiel.'

Davison consented, and the guests, when they found out what was going on, took a hand in, and the business was finally arranged. The Rev Mr Douglas, chaplain of the club, was sent for, and told what was expected of him.

'But the banns have not been proclaimed according to law,' said the cautious parson. 'This will do,' said Davison, pulling out a document. 'Here is a special licence.'

All preliminaries being arranged, a man worked his way through the crowd, and the burly form of Donald Grant, the blacksmith, stood before the Laird. 'Laird,' says Donald, I got masel' hurt, an' lost a guid game o' curling through this business, an' I think I should be best man.'

Grant an' Graham,' says the Laird, 'ye ha'e laid a plot to bring a' this about, I can see it a' noo.'

'We did, Laird, and it's a' richt. Ye beat Langholm. That's something, an', as for the rest, we are a' satisfied.'

They were married, and the rest of the night was spent in the enjoyment usual on such occasions, and neither the Laird nor any one concerned has any reason to regret the trick played upon him to bring about the marriage of the Laird's daughter.

The Winnipeg Daily Tribune was published from 1890 to 1980. The newspaper archives are not (yet) available online, but are held by the University of Manitoba, see here. It would be interesting to know who was the author of the tale above - presumably an expat Scot who had fond memories of curling back in Scotland, and was a romantic at heart! The top photo is © Bob Cowan. 

Curling's history can be traced by studying old stones. The earliest curling stones are called 'loofies', and were without handles. In the photo above, David Smith is demonstrating how he thought a loofie from his collection might have been thrown. No ice on this occasion back in 2003, the discussion taking place in the back garden of his home in Troon!

Most loofies that have survived to this day are not as large as David's. They have indentations for thumb and fingers, as above, and were usually light enough to be easily held in the hand. Exactly how they were thrown, or indeed how the sport was played, remains unknown.

But this article is not about loofies, but is about what followed as the sport of curling evolved.

The introduction of a handle heralded the second era of curling in Scotland, probably in the seventeenth century, the game then being played with rough blocks with handles attached, such as in the image above. If the first era in curling history might be called the 'Age of the Loofie', then the next stage in the sport's evolution could be termed, 'The Boulder Age'.

These old stones varied considerably in size and weight. Each player threw one stone, often in teams of eight players aside. Rough though they were, curling stones were prized objects. Some even had names! These reflected their characteristics, or identified them with their owner.

By the time curling clubs were being formed in the early nineteenth century, most were playing with round, dressed stones. Some treasured their old curling stones, even though they were no longer played with. The Reverend John Kerr's book The History of Curling and Fifty Years of the Royal Caledonian Crling Club was published in 1898. Kerr included the names of several clubs who still looked after old stones from the 'Boulder Era', with names. For example, Alyth CC had 'Rookie', 'The Goose', and 'The Deuk'. Blairgowrie had 'The Soo', 'The Baron', 'The Egg', 'The Fluke', and 'Robbie Dow'. Coupar-Angus had 'Suwaroff', 'Cog', 'Fluke', 'Black Meg', and 'The Saut Backet'.

'The Provost' and 'The Baillie' were in the care of the Dunblane CC. The Duns CC had 'Rob Roy', and another called 'The Egg' (presumably different from Blairgowrie's stone of the same name). It was recorded that 'The Guse' and 'Bluebeard' had gone missing. 'The Whaup' and 'The Town Clerk' belonged to Hawick CC, and 'The Girdle' and 'The Grey Hen' to Jedburgh.

Lochmaben had 'Tutor', 'Skelbyland', 'The Craig', 'Wallace', 'Steelcap', 'Bonaparte', 'Hughie', 'Redcap', and 'The Skipper'. Muthill CC had 'The Bible', 'The Goose', and 'The Hen'. Markinch CC had 'The Doctor'. Newtyle CC had 'The Prince' and 'The Kebbuck'.

The table above lists the five Blairgowrie stones.

Kerr's book includes images of what these stones looked like. Top left is 'The Soo', and top right, 'The Baron'. 'The Egg' is in the middle. Bottom left is 'The Fluke' and 'Robbie Dow' is bottom right. All have looped, or double, handles.

The stone in the photo above, beside a modern stone for comparison, is now part of the Scottish Curling Trust's collection, see here. It is called 'The Egg' and is certainly the stone of that name which once belonged to the Blairgowrie CC.

The last stone that Kerr describes in his book is shown above. It was presented to the Royal Club in 1888 by John Wilson of Chapelhill, Cockburnspath, and we can assume that it had been used in that part of the country in years past. It may have had a name before 1888, but, as it was exhibited at the 50th Anniversary meeting of the Royal Club, it became known as 'The Jubilee Stone'. It weighs 117 lbs.

The stone had belonged to John Hood who had died at Townhead in January 1888. Kerr explains, "Mr Hood, it appears, had often seen his father play the stone, and he himself had played it occasionally before dressed stones were introduced. It was sent by Mr Wilson to be preserved in the archives of the Royal Club; and we are sure that generations of curlers will look upon it with interest and astonishment, if not with dismay."

It remains a prized possession of the Royal Club and has been brought out of retirement on occasion and played as the ceremonial 'opening stone' of major championships. 

If I had to pick my favourite named stone, it would be this one. It is undoubtedly from the Boulder Age, although it has been worked on by a mason to give it a triangular shape. Triangular shaped stones were not uncommon, although usually they were not as large as this, which weighs around 110 lbs. They were called 'whirlies', as because of their shape, when hit with another stone, they often just revolved on the spot rather than being driven out of the house! This one is in the care of the Scottish Curling Trust and has been catalogued here, where it is described as "A triangular hammer-dressed stone, weight 110 lbs, presented to the RCCC by Mr A Henderson Bishop in 1938. It was one of the Meigle Grannies and its neighbour was sent to the Montreal Curling Club by Mr Bishop."

This stone is described as 'one of the Meigle Grannies'. I was intrigued. Where had they come from? How had Henderson Bishop acquired them? Were the two 'Grannies' identical? They would not have been a pair, as at the time when they were in use it was 'one curler - one stone'. But if they had been used by members of the same team, they would have been serious weapons on the ice!

Andrew Henderson Bishop was a curling enthusiast, and an enthusiastic collector. I wrote about him here. He put together a collection of curling memorabilia which was exhibited in the Palace of History at the 1911 Scottish Exhibition in Glasgow. In the exhibition catalogue I found 'The Grannies'. They are listed in a collection of 'Curling Stones or Channel Stanes of the Boulder Type' and were desplayed on a platform along the North Wall. They are catalogued separately:

'No 84 Hammer-dressed Triangular curling stone from Meigle, known as 'Grannie'. Weight 101 lbs.

No 85 Hammer-dressed Triangular curling stone from Meigle, known as 'Grannie'. Weight 110 lbs. Nos 84 and 85 were called 'The Grannies'.'

Both stones were 'Lent by A Henderson Bishop'. From this we learn that the two stones were similar enough be be described together as 'The Grannies', although they were not identical, one being somewhat lighter than the other. The catlogue entries give no clue to how Henderson Bishop came to own the stones, other than they had come from Meigle, a village in Perthshire.

Which one went to Canada? And when and why did Henderson Bishop decide to give one away? And where is it now? I don't have the answer to these questions yet, but I am hopeful that the answers will be found!

Other named stones I've come across in books and articles are, 'The Old Cobbler', 'Sleeping Maggie',  'Creche', 'Tom Scott', 'Wellington', 'The Horse,''The Kirk', 'The Saddle', 'President', 'Soo', 'The Scone', and 'The Bannock'. No doubt there are others.

Such stones were last used in anger in the early years of the nineteenth century. By then, the size and shape of curling stones was being regulated, first by certain curling clubs themselves, and, from 1838, by the Grand (later Royal) Caledonian Curling Club, the sport's governing body. Rule V, shown above, was adopted by the Duddingston Curling Society in 1804. The introduction of 'circular curling stones' heralded the sport's 'Modern Era'.

The photo of David is from my archive, as is the photo of my hand with a loofie from the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum. Other images are from 35mm slides which date from 1979, when the stones photographed were in a display case at the Central Scotland Ice Rink, Perth. The table is from the History of Blairgowrie, online here. Images of the Blairgowrie stones from the History of Curling are scanned from page 41 of the large format edition. The Duddingston rule V is from An Account of the Game of Curling, by a member of the Duddington Curling Society, 1811. 

"When was the sport of curling first played?" is a question that is often asked. "Sixteenth century Scotland", is probably the best response, but that answer needs qualification.

What can be said with certainty is that the sport was being played in and around the town of Perth, Scotland, at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century. We know this because the first printed references to 'curling' and 'curling stones' occur in a publication which dates from 1638, and was probably written some years before in 1620.

The publication, whose title page is shown above, is called 'The Muses Threnodie, or, Mirthful Mournings on the Death of Master Gall. Containing varietie of pleasant poeticall descriptions, morall instructions, historiall narrations, and divine observations, with the most remarkable antiquities of Scotland, especially at Perth'. The author was Henry Adamson, and it was printed at Edinburgh in King James College by George Anderson, 1638.

It comprises two poems written by Henry Adamson, occasioned by the untimely death, from tuberculosis, of a Perth merchant called James Gall. Rather than mourn Gall himself, Adamson makes George Ruthven the chief mourner. Ruthven was a respected physician and surgeon in Perth, and was 92 years old when the poems were published. Both Gall and Ruthven were real people, well known to the author of the poems.

The author, Henry Adamson, calls himself 'a student in Divine, and Humane Learning'. Born in 1581, he trained as a priest, but became a school teacher in Perth. It seems that he wrote the poems for his own amusement, not intending for them to be published, and at first resisted suggestions from friends to do so. Eventually, William Drummond of Hawthornden, Scotland's most respected poet at the time, see here, persuaded Adamson to have them printed. Indeed, a letter from Drummond, signed 'W.D.', is included as a preliminary page of 'The Muses Threnodie'. Adamson died the year after his poems were published, aged 58.

Adamson's works were reprinted in the eighteenth century, under the same title, but with the following on the title page: 'To this new edition is added explanatory notes and observations by James Cant'. Cant calls himself 'the Editor'. This two volume work was 'printed by George Johnston for the Editor and Robert Morrison, Bookseller, 1774'.

There are a number of significant differences in the two editions. I shall call the 1638 volume 'the original 1638 book', and the later book, 'Cant's 1774 edition'.

Adamson sets the scene in his first poem 'The Inventarie of the Gabions in M George, his Cabinet'. Adamson seems to have made up the word 'gabions' himself at the time (it was not used back then with the meaning that it has today). We might say 'curiosities' nowadays to explain what Adamson was describing. This is a (relatively) short piece, and can be read in full online here. Here's one passage from it:

I've highlighted where 'curling stones' are mentioned:

'His hats, his hoods, his bels, his bones,
His allay bowles, and curling stones,
The sacred games to celebrat ....'

It can be concluded from this that Georve Ruthven, the doctor, had played both bowls and curling. As noted before, if he was 92 in 1638, then his sporting days would have been when he was a younger man - and that puts the sport being played in Perth back into the sixteenth century!

Adamson's main poem 'The Muses Threnodie' itself, is in nine parts, or 'muses'. You can find all online, in a readable form, on the allpoetry.com website.

The curling reference is in the First Muse, transcribed here, from where the above is extracted.

I must admit I don't find either poem an easy read, but the device Adamson uses is to have the various 'curiosities' of George Ruthven's closet mourn for the deceased James Gall. In the passage above, golf clubs get a mention (the poems are an early reference to this sport too), as do curling stones:

'And ye, my loadstones, of Lednochian lakes,
Collected from the loughs, where watrie snakes
Do much abound, take unto you a part,
And mourn for Gall, who lov'd you with his heart'

Now, Adamson realised that his reference to 'loadstones, of Lednochian lakes' might not be understood, so in the margin of the original 1638 book, opposite to the 'loadstones' reference, is printed the two words 'Curling Stones'! In the digitised versions of the poem online this is missing in most cases.

As Gall had apparently loved his curling stones, we can assume that he also loved the sport itself. The evidence suggests then that James Gall was a curler!

In Cant's 1774 edition, the editor removes the reference to 'curling stones' from the margin, but adds an explanatory footnote:

'Lednoch is situated about four computed miles north from Perth, on the banks of the Almond River; about this place the best curling stones were found. The gentlemen of Perth, fond of this athletic winter diversion on a frozen river, sent and brought from Lednoch their curling stones.'

This fits in with what we assume about early curling, that the players obtained their stones from the beds of rivers where they had been shaped and smoothed by the action of the water. However, Cant was writing perhaps 150 years after Adamson had penned the original poems, so just how much he knew about curling and the curlers of Perth at the beginning of the seventeenth century is questionable. But the association with Lednoch does seem secure enough.

So, we have two references to curling stones in Adamson's poems, and later writers were aware of these.  In The Channel-Stane or Sweepings Frae the Rinks, First Series, published in 1883, the two references to curling stones in Adamson's poems, are described. Given that the author of the work (John MacNair) describes the original 1638 book as 'practically extinct', and that he includes the Lednoch footnote, it would seem that he had used Cant's 1774 edition as his reference.

The Reverend John Kerr in The History of Curling and Fifty Years of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, published in 1898, writes extensively about Adamson's poems. He records that James Gall died in 1620, perhaps only twenty-five years of age, and that Adamson wrote the poems in that year.

Kerr might have had access to the original 1638 book, as well as to Cant's 1774 edition. I say this as the publisher of the History of Curling has typeset the First Muse to show how the words 'Curling Stones' had been placed in the margin of the original 1638 book, as explanation of 'Loadstones of Lidnochian Lakes'(sic), above.

The two references to 'curling stones' described above appear in The Complete Curler by John Gordon Grant, published in 1914. In Beginner's Guide to Curling, by Robin Welsh, published in 1969, the author records just the 'curling stones' mentioned in Adamson's 'The Inventarie of the Gabions in M George, his Cabinet'.

But all these writers missed something very important! It took a young(ish) lecturer at Glasgow University in 1980 to have the idea of looking at the original 1638 book, of which that University had a copy in its Special Collections, and so discover another key reference. The original book actually says that James Gall was a curler! 

In a preface to his poems, Adamson has written the above about James Gall. He was 'a citizen of Perth, and a gentleman of goodly stature, and pregnant wit, much given to pastime, as golf, archery, curling, and jovial company.'

It could not be clearer that here was someone who loved his sport - both golf and curling, and enjoyed fun company. Nearly four hundred years later we probably all know friends who fit this description.

Why hadn't this obvious reference been noted sooner? I suspect that the rarity of the original volume was the reason. Cant's 1774 edition does not include the preface. This important reference to curling - the first time the sport is mentioned in print - must have been overlooked because no-one had studied the original book in detail, relying only on Cant's 1774 edition. How important it is, especially in these days when information is communicated widely online, to check back and confirm the original source material!

The whole preface which shows that James Gall was a curler, appears in this digitised version online of 'The Inventarie of the Gabions in M George, his Cabinet'. 

Two more thoughts. Why did George Ruthven have more than one curling stone in his closet? As far as we are aware, the sport was played in the sixteenth, seventeenth and much of the eighteenth century with one stone for each curler, and the earliest of these stones were 'loofies', without handles. Did Ruthven have stones for different occasions, or did he have spares, to allow friends to play?

Adamson's poems, as well as providing the earliest dated reference to curling and curling stones, give us the names of two Perth curlers - George Ruthven and James Gall. The names should be better known than they are. It is likely that the poems' author Henry Adamson played too - he certainly knew about the sport to have included the mentions described here. 

I am most grateful to the helpful staff of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh, and at the University of Glasgow Library. Both places hold copies of the original 1638 book and Cant's 1774 edition. The images from the original 1638 book are from the National Library's copy. The other images are screenshots from online digitised copies or scans from books in the author's library. 

I had always assumed that boxes like this were used primarily for storage at home, or perhaps in a curling house near the pond. A box containing two stones is a heavy weight to carry on to the ice. But I've seen a couple of examples with metal runners on the bottom, turning the box into a sled, suggesting that they could have been used to slide stones over the ice itself.

But boxes containing two stones were heavy to lift, and although in theory they could be taken by train, they would have been cumbersome to manipulate, especially from train to loch. I suspect that such boxes were used primarily for summer storage.

This image, from an auction some years ago, shows a variety of baskets, of different styles, all with leather straps as reinforcement, stones not being light in weight! Close examination showed considerable damage to the wicker.

The photo also shows three leather 'baskets', these to protect just the stones with handles removed.

Here is a pair of wicker baskets, just for stones, with no space for handles, that have been well looked after for more than 100 years, in all probability.

Wicker baskets succumb readily to woodworm, and that probably is the reason that so few have survived to the twenty-first century.

These leather 'containers' would protect stones, whose handles had been removed.

Here is an even simpler leather construction, really just to facilitate carrying the stones.

Handles, stone bolts and washers would have been carried separately, perhaps just in a pocket, or occasionally in a special pouch, see here.

Here is a 'top of the range' curling basket in full leather.

And here is a beautiful pair of leather baskets, designed to protect stones with handles attached. These would have been expensive items at the time. But again, so were curling stones!

Retailers of curling stones often sold accessories. This advert from an Edinburgh shop in 1907 advertises 'Baskets - either plain, or lined and strapped'. But note that an alternative was available. I wonder if any examples of the 'New Caledonian Curling Bag' have survived. These bags apparently enabled 'the stones to be carried more easily than in the baskets'! I don't know what these bags were like. Do get in touch if you know of any that have survived.

Now, how exciting is this! This is a photo of a new curling stone basket from Hastingwood Baskets in West Kilbride, Scotland, commissioned by Californian curler Alice Mansell. This is for a stone called 'Big Bertha' - a Blue Hone Ailsa Craig weighing 47 lbs.

Here's 'Big Bertha' tucked into her basket being toasted by Alice and Big Bertha's owner, Richard Lazarowich, with bourbon from nearby Sonoma County. (What? Not with Scotch whisky?)

Alice has commissioned a further two baskets from the Scottish supplier. She says, "Many Californians are starting to own their own stones to revive the outdoor curling game on our seasonal outdoor rinks in urban areas and natural ice up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  We've curled at Yosemite National Park, under Mount Shasta, near Donner Summit, and downtown San Francisco and San Jose so far.  The curling stone baskets will be well used."

Wonderful!

I am especially grateful to Gail Munro who supplied many of the images above of baskets in her collection. Thanks Gail. And to Alice Mansell for the photos and story of sourcing her new baskets. The newspaper images are © The British Library Board, courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive. The Anderson and Sons advert is from a 1907-08 Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual. Other photos are by the author.

When I first read that the Scottish curlers who visited parts of Canada and the United States in the winter of 1902-03 had come up against Canadian women's sides, and lost on three occasions, I was intrigued! I set out to find out more.

I wondered at first if any of the Scottish men had ever shared curling ice with women before. At the beginning of the twentieth century, as I've discussed here and here, curling in Scotland was male dominated, and only one of the twenty-four men came from a club with female members, as far as I can see from the club membership returns in the Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual for 1902-03.

In 1902, very few of Scotland's 619 curling clubs listed women among their membership, although five were ladies-only clubs. William Henderson was a member of the Kinnochtry CC, which had two 'extraordinary members' in Miss M Lyburn and Miss Henderson, so it is possible that he had played alongside, or against, these women before he gained his place on the touring team.

Three other members of the team, Provost D R Gordon and Dr Robert Kirk, from Bathgate CC, and Major Scott Davidson, of Hercules CC, would have been well aware of the associated women's clubs, Boghead Ladies' CC and Hercules Ladies' CC. Indeed, Dr Kirk's wife, Violet, had been secretary and treasurer of Boghead Ladies' when that club was admitted to the Royal Club in 1897, and in 1902 was the club's President. One has to wonder whether curling was much talked about in the Kirk household, and even if they had played together?

According to the Reverend John Kerr, the Team's captain who compiled the record of the tour (Curling in Canada and the United States, published in 1904), the first encounter with Canadian women had not been a scheduled match. He says, "When it became known that there were many keen curlers among the Quebec ladies who were anxious to have a game with the Scottish curlers, it was arranged that two rinks of the bachelors should be told to play the ladies, the married contingent being strongly desirous that the ladies should score a victory. In this they were not disappointed, for while the bachelors had a tie in one rink - Mr Bramwell v Miss Scott - they lost by 9 shots in the other, on which Miss Brodie skipped against Mr Prain."

These games took place on Thursday, January 8, 1903. The two Scottish skips were Robert Bramwell of the Upper Nithsdale CC, and Henry Prain of Castle Huntly CC. The names of the other players are not given. The membership of the Quebec Ladies' CC is first listed in the Royal Club Annual of 1905-06. At that time the club had 39 members. A Miss R R Scott was on the Council of Management then, and a Miss Brodie was the club's treasurer. Were these the women who skipped against the Scottish men in 1903? More research is required to find out about these pioneering women curlers.

There is a sense that Kerr considered the games with the women 'a bit of a joke'. He himself did not take part, and goes on to say, "Apart from the point of gallantry the result was not to be wondered at, for here and elsewhere in Canada, the ladies play the game with small iron stones about half the size and weight of the irons used by the gentlemen, in the use of which, by long practice, they are past masters, while the Scotsmen were considerably at sea at what might be regarded as a ping-pong form of curling."

In 1903, the use of the phrase 'a ping-pong form of curling' seems derogatory today, but Kerr goes on to write, "It was most refreshing to see the dexterity of the lady curlers, and the enthusiastic way in which they entered into the game, their sweeping being quite a lesson to everyone."

There are no photographs in Kerr's book of the actual match, but this image, 'Lady Curlers, Quebec', accompanies the report of the games against the women. Unfortunately, there is no indication of where it was taken, who took it, or who the players are. It looks to be in a two-sheeter rink. Whatever its provenance, this photo is certainly one of the earliest to show Canadian women curlers playing curling, and the small iron stones are evident. I wonder if the original image, which would be much clearer, has been preserved anywhere?

On his return to Scotland, Bathgate's Provost Gordon published a little booklet entitled 'With the Curlers in Canada', to raise money for a fund to build a United Free Church in Bathgate. Gordon gives more information than Kerr about these games against the ladies.

In describing the Team's visit to Quebec he says, "Here we were invited to engage in a match with the ladies - two rinks a side. There were heard the usual voices who counselled that no match should be played for fear the colours of the team would be lowered. Some thought that the Scottish tartan had been very severely torn up to that date, and any further discomfiture in that direction would not greatly matter.

The prevailing opinion was that eight bachelors should be sent out to meet the lady curlers. I had the honour of leading the ice in one of the rinks. The conditions were that we should adopt the small curling irons, which resemble a toy tea kettle, beautifully turned on concave bottoms. They weigh about 18 or 20 lbs. The ladies could play them most accurately and it required all the balance and skill of the gentlemen to hold their own with the ladies.

The rinks were surrounded by all the youth and beauty of Quebec, who enjoyed the novel spectacle of big brawny Scots in knickerbockers and tam o' shanters contesting for all they were worth for supremacy. As you know, victory rested with the ladies, who well deserved it. But let me tell you that the fair veterans of the curling rink were cheered and encouraged by every one on playing an excellent shot, and that the Scottish Team did everything possible to render the play of the ladies successful. Every one was more delighted than another with their victory. Like a vanquished general who hands over his sword to the conqueror. I handed over my curling besom or cowe to the skip of the ladies' rink to be hung in her boudoir with a Gordon tartan ribbon tied round it, in token of surrender and as a remembrance of the historic meeting between the sons of the Thistle and the daughters of the glorious Maple leaf."

So, Provost D R Gordon played against the Quebec sides. I wonder who it was amongst the Canadian women who went home with a Scottish curling broom, and if it ever did hang 'in her boudoir'!

At this point, I should say that although the 1902-03 Tour is now considered a great success on a wide variety of fronts, at the time Scots curlers at home, perhaps expecting too much of the travelling team and being ignorant of how good their Canadian opposition were, had a different reaction. Gordon's comments confirm that the Team knew that disappointing results until that point on the Tour were not being well received back in Scotland. And that Team members had discussed the public relations consequences of playing against the women, win or lose.

And newspapers in Scotland did see this first defeat by the women as extremely newsworthy.

The Dundee newspapers were receiving results and reports from a member of the touring team (Henry Prain). In this report printed in the Dundee Evening Post on January 9, Prain leads with the matches against the Victoria Club and the Quebec Club. Mention of the games against the women, in which he was on the losing side, comes at the end. The sub-editor saw that this result was the one for the headline! (The scores given here differ from those later recorded by Kerr in Curling in Canada and the United States, and appear to be wrong. As noted above, one of the games finished as a tie, whereas Prain's side lost by nine shots.)

The Dundee Courier of Saturday, January 10, sought to excuse poor results in Canada on the basis that the tourists would have been 'a little rusty', because of the mild winters of previous years. The defeat by the women did not go unnoticed. The unnamed writer of this article says, "Their crowning humiliation has just occurred in the shape of a defeat at the hands of lady curlers in Canada. The Scotsmen may, of course, have been overpowered by chivalry or nervousness."

So, some at home even saw the defeat by the women as a 'humiliation'

It seems that curlers in Alloa were so dismayed by results from Canada that they contacted the Royal Club Secretary to make him aware of their feelings. Whether it was news of the defeat by the women that had prompted this we can only speculate! This letter to Davidson Smith may well have been 'tongue in cheek'. But it was taken seriously when it appeared in print, and newspapers in England picked up on the story, perhaps somewhat mischievously, there being no English curlers among the touring party.

A Scotsman reader also sought to find excuses for the team's losses against the women. In a Letter to the Editor printed in the January 23rd issue and dated the day before, 'JLM' writes, "In your issue of 11th inst it was announced that a match had taken place between the Scottish bachelors and the Quebec ladies, which resulted in the defeat of the former by 4 shots. I have heard it stated that the bachelors and ladies played on equal terms, but this would not appear to be the case. I have received a letter today from one of the Scottish skips, who informs me that the match in question his team was handicapped by having to play with 'iron stones' weighing 62 lb, against irons of only 30 lb in weight used by the ladies."

January 11 was a Sunday, and the Scotsman was not published on that day. JLM is referring to the report above, from January 9. Incidentally, the Scotsman's'Correspondent' was the Touring Team's Captain, the John Kerr. Note too that the scores printed here against the ladies are the same as those in the Dundee Evening Post, above, the women winning both games.

Anyway, JLM's compaint is nonsense. It is inconceivable that irons of different sizes and weights would have been used within the same game. In any case Gordon records that the Scots played with the same small irons as the women. Do does Henry Prain who is quoted by Kerr, "It is to be said in extenuation that we played with very light irons, and they present a very small mark at the distance of a full size rink." JLM had obviously misinterpreted the letter he received. The matches were indeed played on equal terms.

Incidentally, it was usual for male curlers in Quebec and Montreal to play with heavy irons (see photos here). These could weigh 60 lbs (27 kg). However, for the visit of the Scots, the Canadian men had agreed to play with granites, rather than their usual irons, in deference to the visitors. Not the women, though. Women's irons were smaller (see comment on this post here), and according to Shirley Adams weighed around 32 lbs (say 15 kg).

On Friday, January 9, the Scots travelled to Montreal. On the Saturday they received the Freedom of the city from Mayor Cochrane before all six teams played games against the Montreal Club. On the Monday, they played at Westmount against the Heather Club.

But on Tuesday, January 13, the men again faced the women. The 'Ladies' Montreal Curling Club', as it was called on its foundation in 1894, was the first all women's curling club to be formed in Canada, around the same time the first women's clubs were being formed in Scotland. It shared ice and facilities with the Montreal Curling Club, but remained quite distinct from the male club, according to One Hundred and Fifty Years of Curling 1807-1957, a history of the Royal Montreal Curling Club.

Kerr records, "On the Tuesday, three rinks skipped respectively by Messrs Henderson, McMillan, and Bramwell, played three rinks of the Montreal Ladies Club, the first named finishing 4 up, but the others being each 9 down, the skips against them being respectively Miss N Smith, Mrs Ogilvy and Miss Bond. Over 1200 spectators were said to have witnessed the match. The play of the ladies was excellent, and was much applauded by their opponents, who all agreed they could curl as well as the gentlemen."

And that was the extent of Kerr's description of the games. He did not name the team members.

Other newspapers provide more information. The Edinburgh Evening News, on receiving the results of the Montreal games, could not resist the subheading 'Beaten again by the Ladies'!

Some days later more information became available to the Scottish press.

By Wednesday, January 28, the news desk of the Dundee Evening Telegraph had apparently received copies of Canadian newspapers and had decided to reprint the Montreal results, as above, showing the team lineups, as well as the Canadian headlines:


The Dundee Evening Telegraph noted that the Canadian paper article had been written 'evidently by a son of Scotia'!  

I see that Robert Bramwell, from the Upper Nithsdale CC, who had skipped in a tied game against the Quebec Ladies, was soundly beaten in Montreal. The other losing skip was Thomas Macmillan of Glencairn CC. William Henderson of Kinnochtry CC skipped his team to a win. Henry Prain, who had lost in Quebec, seems not to have ventured onto the ice against the Montreal women! But Provost Gordon did, and was once again on the losing side.

Gordon did not have so much to say about this second defeat. In With the Curlers in Canada he records the games against the ladies of the Montreal Club, "Some members of our team engaged the ladies in a curling match. Afterwards a brilliant reception was held in honour of the event. As in the game at Quebec our team suffered defeat at the hands of fine lady curlers, who were experts and enthusiastic players. That game was also played with the small irons.

Many people have laughed at the victory of the lady curlers, and some have tried to find the reason for the result. Those who have felt the influence of the ladies most will readily believe that their charm, aided by their great skill, accounted for the defeat of the Scotsmen."

There is yet another match against the Canadian women that must be documented.

In recording the events of Thursday, January 15, when the Scottish Team were guests of the Montreal Thistle Club, Kerr says in his book, "While the games with the Thistle were going on, two rinks of the team, skipped by Captain Simpson and Mr Bentley Murray, played against two rinks of the St Lawrence Ladies' Club and spent a delightful afternoon." Captain Simpson was James Simpson, the laird of Mawcarse, who had been an officer with the Fife and Forfar Imperial Yeomanry. He was a member of Orwell CC.  D. Bentley Murray of Airthrey Castle CC was the youngest of the Scots on tour, at 29 years of age.

Kerr goes on to talk about the decoration of the rink, the food, the souvenir pins, what the ladies were wearing, the enthusiastic spectators, and those who attended the after-game reception. Only after two pages of the above does he mention who won, writing, " ... the match, which like those with the Quebec and Montreal clubs, was in favour of the fair sex." He does not record the scores. And Provost Gordon makes no mention of these games in his booklet.

However, the scores can be found in the Scotsman of February 2, 1903, in a long article summarising the Team's time in this part of Canada. This says, "The ladies' club in connection with the St Lawrence Club defeated the Scottish curlers, two rinks a side this afternoon by 27 shots to 14." 

That wasn't all though. Almost in passing Kerr mentions that the match against the ladies had "given delight to the visiting Scotsmen" and as a consequence a further match was arranged on the Friday, "the rinks on this occasion being mixed - two ladies and two gentlemen on each." No names, no scores, but Kerr thinks it important to record, "Tea was afterwards served by Mrs Roy, Mrs Guthrie and Miss Brophy."

Curling historians, and those who followed the recent World Mixed Curling Championship in Kazan, Russia, may well wonder if this passing reference to a game with two men and two women on each side, is indeed to the first recorded mention of an international mixed curling match! 

This photo of the 'Officers of the St Lawrence Ladies' Club, 1902-03', appears beside the written report of the day. The wonderful thing is that this (posed) studio photograph does have the names of those in the group, although the source is not identified. Back row, left - right, Mrs Hodgson, Mrs E A Reipert (secretary), Mrs J Y Roy (Vice-president), Miss Mitchell, Miss Robertson. Middle row: Mrs J F Reipert, Mrs W L Chipchase (President), Mrs Wm Cairns. Front: Mrs Spencer and Miss Milne.

It would be interesting to have confirmed which, if any, of these ladies played against the Scotsmen.

Note that the two irons shown in this studio photograph are the larger men's irons, not those usually thrown by the women.

One other image from Curling in Canada and the United States might help. I believe it is captioned inadequately as it says, 'Rink from Montreal with Scoto-Canadian rink'. It is taken at the door to the Montreal Thistle Club, not the Montreal Club, so perhaps shows some of the St Lawrence ladies who played against the men, perhaps even in one of the mixed games! Its positioning in the book, alongside the report of the St Lawrence games, would support this.

Those with a forensic bent might like to closely examine the photo and compare it with the one above to see if any faces match.

On the evening of Thursday, January 15, two Scottish teams, with the tour captain John Kerr, went to Lachine. There they mixed up the teams with the local curlers 'so as to make it as sociable as possible'. These games were even played with irons.  

There is no mention of any involvement of women curlers at Lachine, but this photo appears somewhat randomly in Kerr's book, on page 231, entitled 'Officers and Skips, Lachine Ladies Club, 1903'. Note the little irons on this occasion. There's a photo credit with this image to Notman and Son. This famous photographic studio is described here. The Notman photographic archives can today be found in the McCord Museum in Montreal. The above image is online here, much clearer than that scanned from Kerr's book. It is described as 'Lachine Ladies curling team, Montreal, QC, 1903'.

The Scottish Team went on to tour Ontario, and travelled as far west as Winnipeg, before heading home via Minneapolis, Chicago, Utica and New York.

The Team was feted on their return to Scotland, and of course that first Royal Caledonian Curling Club visit to North America set a precedent for future goodwill tours that continue to this day.

One further story, which shows that the defeats of the Scots by the Canadian women remained in the mind, can be found a year later, in an extensive report in the Falkirk Herald on January 23, 1904, of a Masonic dinner. One of the guests was Dr Robert Kirk, mentioned earlier, his wife being a keen curler in Bathgate. Kirk had been the Team's doctor in North America. He gave a speech, outlining many of the differences that existed in play there, compared with Scotland. He praised the standard of play of their hosts, and the hospitality the Scots had received. He mentioned the ice conditions, saying, "The ice bothered them at first when they first went to Canada. They were not accustomed in Scotland to playing on ice as level as a billiard table, as that was the kind of ice they had in Canada."

Then, "As to the defeat of the Scottish curlers by the Canadian lady curlers, he had to say for the benefit of those present that no married men played against the ladies - (laughter) - and that had perhaps a great deal to do with the result of the game. The ladies and gentlemen played on that occasion with the same size of curling irons - they did not play with curling stones - and those irons were like small goblets. The ladies played a beautiful game, and before the gentlemen got hold of the ice, the ladies had the game won."

A married man, Dr Kirk did not himself face the women on the ice.

Dr Kirk concluded his speech with this anecdote, "A Quebec gentleman whom he met on the ice said to him - 'What on earth tempted you to try conclusions with the ladies? We would think twice about doing so, and we have played with the irons all the time.' (Laughter and applause)"

To finish on a more serious note, Provost Gordon was much taken with what he saw of Canada and its people in 1903. Before his final chapter of With the Curlers in Canada, he writes, "In Canada the status of women is better than in this country. Of course, I speak as a whole. They are given
greater and higher privileges than is the case here; they take part in many social functions, their freer life and style of living make them more natural and companionable, their frank and open manner begotten of equal privileges with man, gives them that confidence in their own powers
which places them amongst the leading women of the time."

This gives a fascinating insight into the position of women in Canada, and by contrast in Scotland, in 1903. Provost D R Gordon was a successful businessman in Bathgate as an ironmonger, seedsman and motor engineer. 

It comes as no surprise that Gordon returned to Canada again as a member of the Scottish Team that toured in January 1912. The Scots had learned something from the first Tour. In 1912, no matches were played against women's teams!

Images above are all from Curling in Canada and the United States: A record of the Scottish Team, 1902-03, and the Game in the Dominion and the Republic, to give it its full title. It was published in 1904 by Geo A Morton, 42 George Street, Edinburgh, and The Toronto News Co Ltd, Toronto.

Kerr's book is more than just a record of curling matches, and of the Tour itself. In it you can find much about the Dominion of Canada and the USA as they were in 1903, the way of life then, the economy, and much about other forms of recreation, sightseeing opportunities, and modes of transport. Indeed, 24 pages of the book are devoted just to the return voyage on the SS Lucania from New York to Liverpool.

The cartoons at the top of the post originally appeared in a Canadian newspaper, but were reprinted in the Dundee Courier, and in Kerr's book, from where they were scanned.

'With the Curlers in Canada' by D R Gordon can be downloaded from the University of Manitoba library as a pdf file here. It is a much simpler read than Kerr's detailed tome.

The newspaper clippings are © The British Library Board, or © Johnston Press plc, courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive, which continues to be the most wonderful resource for curling research.

I would be very pleased to hear from any descendants of the Canadian lady curlers mentioned in this article, and to learn any further information that might be available in Quebec and Montreal about when the visiting Scotsmen were defeated by the Canadian women!

When writing about named curling stones recently, see here, I mentioned the 'Grannies from Meigle'. These distinctive stones from curling's 'boulder age' belonging to Andrew Henderson Bishop had been exhibited together at the 1911 Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art, and Industry at Kelvingrove, Glasgow, with many other curling artifacts. The above image shows part of the South Gallery and on close inspection a large number of curling stones can be seen on the left, at the foot of the north wall of the gallery. The Grannies will be amongst these.

Here are the catalogue entries, describing both stones.

I knew that one of these unusual stones had survived. It was presented to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club by Henderson Bishop in 1938, and in August, 1939, the Perthshire Advertiser recorded that it was among a collection of old stones that was to be exhibited at the Central Scotland Ice Rink in Perth, from the beginning of the 1939-40 season. The rink itself had opened in October 1936.

Henderson Bishop's gift of the Grannie and three other stones is recorded in the Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual for 1939-40.

The old rink at Perth is certainly where I first saw it, in the 1960s, and where I had its photograph taken in 1980, above. More recently it was to be found at the Royal Club's former headquarters at Cairnie House, Ingliston, but now, with most of the Scottish Curling Trust's collection, it is in safe storage at Stirling.

I should point out that although the stone is catagorised as from the 'Boulder Age', it is not a naturally formed rock, having been hammer dressed to a triangular shape. 'Whirlies' like this would have been hard to dislodge during play, never mind its enormous weight!

I wondered what had happened to the other Grannie, which was recorded in the 1939-40 Annual as having been sent to Montreal. With some research, luck, and assistance from Canada, here is what I've uncovered.

The second Scottish Men's Tour to Canada and the USA took place in season 1911-12. Setting out from Glasgow, the thirty-one tourists took with them on board the Allan Line's Ionian their own curling stones, and four old stones which were to be a gift to the Montreal Curling Club, the oldest in Canada.

After a supper at the Montreal Club on January 11, 1912, with some seventy curlers in attendance, the old stones were handed over by the Scottish Team Captain, Colonel Robertson-Aikman, on behalf of Andrew Henderson Bishop, who was at that time Vice-President of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. The event was recorded by the Montreal Daily Witness where one of the stones was described as 'a massive white granite, triangular in shape, and not portable'. This description certainly fits the description of the Canadian Grannie.

The newspaper reported that Colonel Aikman said, "He had heard of the weight that the Montreal men could throw; he would like them to try their hands at the big white one."

"Mr A R Oughtred, accepting the stones on behalf of the Montreal Club, said he would put them where they would be safe, and he assured the gallant Colonel that they would not be used in any ordinary match."

It is safe to assume that Canadian Grannie remained with the Montreal Club for some years, but a recent request for information on her whereabouts did not elicit a response. That's when a little bit of luck led to the wonderful discovery that the other Grannie had indeed survived the intervening one hundred years.

Credit for the discovery must go to 'The Curling Librarian', and her blog post here. Lisa Shamchuk lives in Edmonton and had become involved with the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, Canada's women's championship, when that event came to Red Deer in 2012. Her job, as a volunteer at the championship, was to write articles for the Canadian Curling Association (as it was called then) website. But she also recorded her experiences on her own blog. On Friday, February 23, 1912, she visited the HeartStop Lounge, and wrote that she had found the display of old rocks interesting. She posted a photo of a large triangular stone. I recognised it immediately!

When I contacted Lisa, she was able to find the original digital negative of the photo she had used in her blog post, plus another photo she took on the day, and gave me permission to reproduce these here.

Here is Canadian Grannie on display in 2012.

It looks as if Canadian Grannie has suffered some damage to one of its vertices, but perhaps this is not surprising. Your nose might be a bit bashed too if you were four hundred years old!

I suspected that the display of curling memorabilia at the Scotties had been put together by Curling Canada so I contacted a former curling media acquaintance, Al Cameron, who is now their Director, Communication and Media Relations. He confirmed that I was on the right track.

Danny Lamoureux, Curling Canada's Director, Curling Club Development and Championship Services, takes up the story, writing, "The stone was displayed at the Canadian Museum of Civilization as it was on a 25-year loan from us to them. About ten years ago, they returned it to us. We took it around the country to show people who attended our events. Unfortunately, we suspended our travelling road show about three years ago because of budgets."

Danny concludes, "The Canadian Grannie is well looked after in an secure environment here in Ottawa. Hopefully, one day, she will surface again for curlers to enjoy."

And hopefully too Scottish Grannie might also be put on show one day for Scottish curlers to see and appreciate. Would it not be wonderful if the long separated Grannies might even be united one day, even temporarily, perhaps as part of a historical exhibit at a World Championship event?

We may never know the full story of these unusual stones. From where had Henderson Bishop obtained them, who made them and when, and where they were played with? They are not water worn boulders obtained from a river. They have been hewn into a triangular form. Why were two of them made? Meigle is a village to the north east of Perth in Strathmore, and Andrew Henderson Bishop's notes associate the stones with Meigle. Is this significant? The Historical Curling Places website shows many curling ponds in the area from the nineteenth century, but the Grannies surely date from at least the century before that. Perhaps an expert geologist might be able to identify where the material of which they are made was found, or quarried. The mystery of the Grannies remains.

The top image is part of a photograph of the South Gallery of the Palace of History which was printed in the Catalogue of Exhibits, Volume 2, facing page 884. The extract describing the stones was scanned from page 889 of the Catalogue. The Perthshire Advertiser clipping is © Trinity Mirror, courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive. Photographs of the Canadian Grannie are courtesy of Lisa Shamchuk, and huge thanks to her. Thanks also go to Al Cameron and Danny Lamoureux of Curling Canada for their help.

My curling history research has taken me to many interesting places in the past year - sites of old curling ponds, curling huts, museums, art galleries, archive centres and libraries. It was a pleasure recently to return to my alma mater, and the library of the University of Glasgow, where I spent much time in the 1960s and 1970s. The University's Special Collections are housed in the top floor of the building. Of particular curling interest are copies of 'The Muses Threnodie', see here. What caught my eye in the Special Collections catalogue, when searching for 'curling', was 'Rules and regulations of the Jedburgh Curling Club, adopted at a general meeting held by them January 25, 1838'.

These few pages from 1838, printed by W Easton, are bound together with other items. Initially I did not see them as unusual, but then I came to Rule XIII: 'Each player to come furnished with two stones, crampets and a besom.'

Bringing one's own stones and a besom (broom) to play with is easy to understand. But 'crampets'? Confusion arises as this term nowadays refers to the flat metal sheets that supply a foothold on outside ice, see here for a picture. It makes no sense that Jedburgh members would all have been required to bring such crampets to the ice. The explanation is that 'crampet' has an earlier meaning. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, crampets were spikes that were attached to your boots or shoes to give a grip on the ice. Think of them as curling's 'crampons'!

Crampets were often spelled 'crampits'.

The earliest reference to crampets that I can find is in the Caledonian Mercury of Saturday, February 8, 1772, when a curling party's curling stones and 'crampits' were lost when the ice they were playing on was washed away.

Another early reference, from 1773, calls them 'cramp-bits'. This is in a poem by James Graeme which can be found online here. Here's part of it:

The goals are marked out; the centre each
Of a large random circle; distance scores
Are drawn between, the dread of weakly arms.
Firm on his cramp-bits stands the steady youth,
Who leads the game: Low o'er the weighty stone
He bends incumbent, and with nicest eye
Surveys the further goal, and in his mind
Measures the distance; careful to bestow
Just force enough: then, balanc'd in his hand,
He flings it on direct; it glides along
Hoarse murmuring, while, plying hard before,
Fail many a besom sweeps away the snow,
Or icicle, that might obstruct its course.

To add to the confusion on names, crampets were also referred to as 'tramps'.

This description of curling is from The Winter Season by James Fisher, written in 1810. This is available as a free ebook, here. On the page where the above appears, the author has added a footnote. This says, "For the information of our southern neighbours who may not be acquainted with the game of curling, so much practised in many parts of Scotland, it may not be amiss to observe, that the tramps are made of iron to go upon the feet, something after the form of stirrup irons, with sharp prominences at the bottom to prevent the curler from sliding while engaged in play."

We can find another description of what crampets were like in The Era, of Sunday March 1, 1840, within an article about curling. "The players formerly used to wear crampits, to enable them to stand steadily when they threw their stones: these were flat pieces of iron, with four spikes below, bound to the sole of the shoe with a strap and buckle."

Note that this article says 'formerly used to wear'.  By 1838, when the Jedburgh CC printed their rules, crampets were no longer in use in other parts of the country.

In An Account of the Game of Curling, published in 1811, John Ramsay writes that, at Duddingston, "The use of crampits is now very much laid aside."

In 1830, in Memorabilia Curliana Mabenensia, Richard Brown writes, "Curling, where it is considered to be practised upon improved principles, has laid aside the use of tramps." But Brown goes on to defend their use in certain circumstances, and it can be assumed from this that they were still in use by members of the Lochmaben Curling Society at that time. Indeed, Lynne Longmore's Minutes of Note, see here, based on the earliest minutes of the Lochmaben Curling Society, has an appendix with that club's rules at November, 1829. These include, "Every player, to come furnished with crampets and a besom, must be ready to play when his turn comes; nor take more than a reasonable time to throw his stone."

At Largs, things were different, and the use of crampets was not countenanced. Indeed, John Cairnie is disparaging of their use elsewhere in the country, writing in his Essay on Curling and Artificial Pond Making, published in 1833, "We are sorry to say, that the almost barbarous custom of wearing crampets on the feet, in many places is still continued."

Jedburgh, apparently, was one such place maintaining the 'barbarous custom'!

So, what were crampets like?

This sketch is from the Rev John Kerr's History of Curling, from 1890.

Kerr also refers to the painting, 'The Curlers', by Sir George Harvey, from 1835, where many of the players are wearing crampets. This painting is currently on display in the 'Playing for Scotland: The Making of Modern Sport' exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. Until recently you had to travel in person to Edinburgh to get close up to the painting. And I would encourage you still to do so, if you can!

However, the National Galleries' new website allows you to zoom into the painting online, and Harvey's detail leaps out from your computer screen, phone, or tablet, see here.

Here, the crampets are attached to the player's shoes and galoshes with straps.
 
Here, the crampets appear to be attached with some sort of screw fitting, over well nailed shoes.

Do examine the painting for yourself, here, and see what the other players are wearing on their feet!

Another way to see what crampets were like, is to head to Tibbermore, near Perth, to look at this memorial on the church wall.

James Ritchie was a keen curler, see here. He died in 1840 and his memorial includes two decorated stones, a broom, and a pair of crampets, all carved in stone. One hundred and seventy-six years on, the monument may be a little weathered, but, remarkably, the spikes on the bottom of the crampets can still be seen.

Considering how common crampets must have been, few examples have survived. Indeed, I do not know of any museum or private collection which contains examples. If you know where any are preserved, please let me know. The image above is of a pair which at one point belonged to David Smith, but latterly were missing, having been lent for display abroad. They are described in his 'Curling: an illustrated history' as having originally come from Lochmaben.

This article began with the observation that Jedburgh curlers in 1838 were required to appear on the ice with their own crampets. That year saw the formation of the Grand Caledonian Curling Club, and the first rules of that body did not include such a requirement. Indeed, a completely different way of establishing a secure stance on the ice while delivering a stone was recommended - more about which in a future article. Jedburgh Curling Club was admitted to the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1845, and we can assume that their requirement that every member had to take to the ice with crampets had, by then, been laid aside.

Crampets caused considerable damage to the ice. It is hard now to imagine how you could sweep whilst wearing such things. But of course, the early regulations for play only allowed sweeping from the far hog towards the tee - and so the players would line up on either side of the ice and ply just a couple of strokes as the stones passed, without moving their feet!

Crampets had advantages when throwing your stone. If there were guards in play, you could easily just move to the side, to get a better view of the target. That this was considered to be cheating, and to be discouraged, can be seen by the inclusion in the first rules of the Grand Caledonian Curling Club in 1838, "Each player to place his feet in such a manner as that, in delivering his stone, he shall bring it over the tee. A player stepping aside to take a brittle (or wick), or other shot, shall forfeit his stone for that end."

More about other forms of curling footwear, as well as foot-boards, foot irons, trickers and hacks, will be the subject of a future article!

The image of 'The Curlers' is © National Galleries of Scotland. The details are screenshots from the zoomed image on the website, here. Other photos are by Bob. Images have been scanned from books in Bob's library. Thanks go to the helpful staff at the University of Glasgow library, and to Imogen Gibbon, at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, for discussions about 'The Curlers'.

Here is a third, very clear image from a postcard sent on April 17, 1909, so dating before that time. It is not credited to Robert Hunter, so perhaps the curling women at Buxton caught the eye of other local photographers. The photo has been posed, and the circles recently scraped, perhaps prior to the beginning of a game.

Might it just be possible that someone can identify these women curlers? Of course, visitors to Buxton could become temporary members of the curling club for short periods, but I believe that those in the three photographs above are most likely to have been those listed in the club's returns in the Royal Club Annuals. As we know when the Pavilion Gardens pond was in use, and when the postcards were mailed, the photographs of the women curlers must have been taken in the winters of 1906-07, 1907-08, or 1908-09.

Here's an enhanced zoomed image of one of the players. Who is this woman?

Do the photographs tell us anything about the sport back then? The brooms are significant. One woman is holding her broom in an underhand grip, the other in an overhand grip.

And here's a closeup of the boots being worn by the woman on the right of the picture. I wonder what grip these gave on the ice!

There are two more curling photographs in the Annual for 1907-08, showing play on the Pavilion Gardens pond, and captioned as having been taken on Boxing Day 1906. One is credited to 'Hunter, Buxton'. It is not too clear, but it does look as if there is at least one woman playing with the men in one of these photographs.

Other images of curling at Buxton can be found online here and here, the latter captioned 'Curling at Buxton - A Ladies' Rink'.

More on early women's curling in a future article.

The top photo is a postcard by 'RF Hunter Photographer, 4 Station Approach, Buxton, Derbyshire'. The middle photo is annotated, 'Hunter Series 19. Copyright. Publishers WH Smith and Son and RF Hunter, Photo Specialist, Buxton'. The curling image is one of three winter activities shown in the postcard. The other photos are of cross country skiing and sledging. The bottom photo is also from a postcard but has no photographer credit.

Review by Bob Cowan

The World Curling Federation had its origins with the international committee of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club back in 1966. This soon became the International Curling Federation, and then the World Curling Federation. To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary this year, the organisation commissioned a book, and that has now been published. Fifty Years of the World Curling Federation: A Celebration is a wonderful photo essay. It is a celebration, not just of the WCF, but of curling, and illustrates brilliantly how the sport has changed over such a short period.

Fifty years covers my own involvement in curling. In the mid-1960s, curling was already a huge part of my life. But as a student, I had little interest in 'curling politics'. However, I had the opportunity to witness the impact of the early days of international curling, when curling fans in Scotland were quite taken aback by the sliding deliveries and the takeout game brought to Scotland by the Ernie Richardson teams, in the early Canada v Scotland encounters of the Scotch Cup. Curling changed back then. The World Curling Federation was 'born' in 1966. The sport was evolving fast, as it still is today. Students of curling's history will love this new book, as I do, as it encapsulates the changing face of the sport over fifty years.

The cover photo says it all. It is an image from 1978, the closing ceremony of the Air Canada Silver Broom in Winnipeg, with the USA team of Bob Nichols, Bill Strum, Tom Locken and Bob Christman on the top step of the podium, the Americans having just defeated Kristian Soerum's Norwegians in the final. There is not a vacant seat in the arena!

The Silver Broom years were a great time in world curling. The late Doug Maxwell was the executive director of that competition from 1968 through to 1985. I note that the book contains many images credited to the 'Doug Maxwell Archive'.

The new book, appropriately perhaps, was the work of a four man team. Mike Haggerty was the skip, coming up with an innovative approach to presenting the WCF's story in nine chapters: 'From the beginning', 'Governance developments', 'Championship history', 'Rise of women', 'Technical developments', 'What makes international curling special?', 'Characters in the game', 'The Olympic and Paralympic journey' and 'A look to the future'. Mike writes well, confidently and entertainingly. And he has so much experience of covering major international curling events from his first foray to a championship in person back in 1991.

The book's managing editor was Cameron MacAllister, the WCF's Communications and Media Relations Manager. Richard Gray, who looks after the organisation's own photo archive, contributed many of his own images from recent years, as well as collating others from many sources. This was a huge job - there are more than 350 photos in the book! Much credit must go the the book's designer, Douglas Colquhoun. He lets the photographs tell the story. Some are quite small, some occupy a whole page. Older black and white images sit comfortably beside modern colour images. The former represent the days of film, that being developed in small rooms at championship venues, often by Michael Burns, the official Silver Broom photographer, whose images feature prominently throughout.

And Michael Burns is featured in the book, above. Note that this photo has a detailed caption, but that is not the rule in the book.

Here, for example, is a page with simply a montage of photos to illustrate 'The Spirit of Curling'. Not a caption in sight. As someone who so often preaches that a photograph is incomplete without a caption, I was surprised to find myself approving of the caption-less approach in many parts of the book. It really works!

Here's another example page, with a single image. Not stated is that it is Ron Anton, 3rd player for Team Canada in 1974, in the foreground, although that is irrelevant to the point that the image conveys.

The book documents all the main events and challenges that our sport has faced over the years, and this is done in an attractive way. Such an 'anniversary book' could so easily have turned into a dry tome. It is definitely not that! It is not a book of championship facts and figures, which in any case can be easily viewed on the WCF website, under 'Historical Results'.

I especially liked the chapter on 'What makes international curling special', including pages on how the sport has been covered by the media in the past and present. Of course the formation of World Curling TV in 2004 was such a significant development, and the visual coverage of our sport online these days, enjoyed by so many, is one of the WCF's greatest achievements.

This being a review, I searched hard to find something - anything - to criticise. I have only found a couple of minor slips. The text is tight and there are few typos that I can see. The first women's junior championship was in 1988, not 1998 as it says in error on page 29.

An important omission, in my opinion, is that there is no mention of the role of volunteers, especially in the organisation and staging of major international events.

I would also have liked to have seen at least one photo showing the delivery of a curling stone from a chair using the cue. The 'delivery stick' is what really makes wheelchair curling possible, as well as extending the curling lives of many social curlers.

In one chapter, the book strays away from the '50 Year' story to the first Olympic curling in 1924 at the Chamonix International Winter Sports Week, retrospectively recognised as the first Olympic Winter Games. Being the pedant that I am, I should point out that the first international 'Curling Congress' was held on January 22, a few days before these Games were due to begin, rather than during the games as Mike writes in the book. This group, described in my article here, convened at the Hotel Majestic in Chamonix to decide, amongst other things, how that first Olympic curling competition should be run!

In the description of the events of 1924, on page 75, I found one photograph which should not have appeared in the book. It is described with the caption 'Curling at the first Olympic Games', which technically may be quite correct, but the included photograph has no relevance to the actual Olympic curling matches. It originates from the IOC archives, see here, where it is described as 'Curling in Chamonix - The Swedish and British teams. Chamonix 1924 - During the events. The Swedish team (SWE) 2nd and the team of Great Britain (GBR) 1st.' This description is in error.

The photo actually shows three of the British reserves, with four players from the Swedish squad, and a 'mystery woman'. No women took part in the Olympic curling in 1924. I wrote about this odd photo here. The evidence points to this being a fun game, which took place on the Chamonix rink, after the official matches had taken place. The mystery woman could be Karl Erik Wahlberg's wife or daughter, or Carl August Kronlund's daughter, who were among Swedish supporters who travelled to Chamonix. I was disappointed to see this photo included in the new book, after it had previously been debunked! Still, until the IOC corrects its description, it will no doubt continue to appear in sports' publications.

The photo that should have been included in the WCF book is this one, showing the winners of the first Olympic Gold Medals for curling. L-R: Willie Jackson (skip), Tom Murray (2nd), Laurence Jackson (lead) and Robin Welsh (3rd), representing GB.

Minor criticisms aside, this is a book which rates as a most significant contribution to the curling library! It will undoubtedly be seen in future years as a resource to be cherished. Books about curling's history are rare things. This is amongst the best ... ever!

The official description of the book, see here, has, appropriately, been put together by Jolene Latimer and Jeffrey Au, the latest competition winners of the WCF Sports Media Trainee Programme. This programme itself is just one example of the innovations that the WCF has brought to the sport in recent years, away from the organisation of international competitions.

There is a hard back edition, and a soft cover. It cannot be purchased from retailers. If you want to have the book for your own library or coffee table, you need to contact the WCF headquarters in Perth. Or you can download pdf files of the book, to peruse on your computer or tablet. Find these here.

Current WCF President, Kate Caithness OBE, hosted the book's launch at the WCF headquarters in Perth last week. Here she is with Roy Sinclair, a former President, 2000-2006.

L-R: Richard Gray, Douglas Colquhoun, and Mike Haggerty. A job well done!

Incidentally, this is the team that puts together the WCF's excellent Annual Review each year. The 2015-16 edition of this can be downloaded here.

On a personal note, in just a few days time it will be one year since David Smith died. I have continued this Curling History website in his memory. He had an extensive collection of curling books. He too, I'm sure, would have loved this new book.

Photos are by Bob, except that of the rogue IOC image, and that of the 1924 Gold Medallists, which is from the 1924-25 Annual of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. Other images from 1924 can be found in my articles about the Chamonix Games, here, here, here, here and here. Lars Ingels has been extremely helpful in trying to establish the identity of the 'mystery woman'.

'Summer Ice' is a traditional game played on a long, narrow table, with a marked target at each end. There is a channel round the table to catch any wayward stones. The rules of the game are very similar to those of curling.

Until recently, the above was the extent of my knowledge about summer ice. I had read it described as 'a most mysterious and unique version of curling'. I always associated it with villages to the north of Glasgow. I had never seen it played.

Earlier this year I came across a painting by Jemima Wedderburn, belonging to the National Galleries of Scotland, and this set me off to find more about summer ice.

Although not currently on show, Jemima Wedderburn's painting can be examined in detail here. It is described: 'Summer ice. Sir Philip Eggerton arriving late, received by the Earl of Selkirk'. Lady Katherine Douglas, Isabella Blackburn, Jemima Wedderburn (the artist herself), Helen Blackburn, Mr Carnegie, and Colonel Oswald, are named in the painting. The occasion can be dated to Saturday, December 4, 1846.

Jemima Wedderburn was brought up by her mother, her father having died just before she was born. Her uncle was Sir George Clerk, an enthusiastic curler, a member of Penicuik Curling Club. Jemima was living at Penicuik House in 1847 and recorded 'The First Grand Match', see here. Given Sir George Clerk's enthusiasm for real curling, it is not surprising that there was a table top version of the game in Penicuik House.

Born in 1823, Jemima would have been only twenty-three years old when she painted 'Summer Ice' in 1846, one of her earliest works. Jemima went on to marry Hugh Blackburn, whom she had known since childhood, in 1849. She became an accomplished painter and illustrator, and many of her paintings can be found by searching for Jemima Blackburn, nee Wedderburn (see here).

Looking closely at the painting, the 'summer ice' in the description looks very like what we would consider now to be a game along the lines of table shuffelboard.

Curlers have always been on the look out for substitutes for curling, given that ice was not always available for play outside.

Back in 2009, David Smith described the wonderful curling-related references that could be found in old newspapers, see here. In the Glasgow Herald of October 28, 1850, he had found an advert by Andrew Galloway of 105 Hope Street, Glasgow, which proclaimed, “The subscriber begs to announce that he has lately introduced an EXCELLENT SUBSTITUTE for ICE, whereby the NATIONAL GAME of CURLING may be enjoyed within doors."

Galloway's tables were reviewed in the Glasgow Sentinel of November 2, 1850. The article notes that earlier table curling games had not been too successful, saying, "Few of these substitutes have yet realised expectation." However, it continues, "The most successful effort that we have yet seen has been made by Mr Galloway, in Hope Street, who has contrived a table, which will enable the curlers to enjoy themselves, in all weathers equally as if they had the glossy surface of a curling pond to act upon. The table is a long plank of mahogany, beautifully smoothed and polished, with the 'tee' and the 'hog-score' carefully defined; and the stones (which are made of cast iron) are polished to correspond with the surface on which they glide."

The article goes on to describe that the stones are prevented from falling off the sides of the table by a surrounding 'hollow', obviating what has been seen as a defect in previous attempts to provide 'summer ice'.

Galloway's adverts proclaim, "The style in which the apparatus is finished is such as to render it an ornamental piece of furniture, suitable for any mansion."

Mansion houses were not the only places that had summer ice tables. The Crichton Royal mental hospital in Dumfries had one, according to the yearly report by its medical superintendent Dr Browne, as reported in the Dundee Courier of May 4, 1853.

In 1870, summer ice was popular in Linlithgow and Bathgate.

By the beginning of the twentieth century, summer ice tables were in use in many different places, and in many towns and villages throughout Scotland. The Conservative Association in Clydebank is just one example, from 1901, above.

The first mention of summer ice in villages to the north of Glasgow that I can find is to Aberfoyle in 1896, where it was being played in the 'Reading Room'. The sport received patronage from Lady Cayzer of Gartmore House who donated a trophy to the recreation clubs of the district for summer ice competition. The Stirling Observer on April 4, 1914, records the 'Summer Ice Club At Home', at Gartmore, an evening of entertainment, the highlight of which was the presentation of the Lady Cayzer Cup, won back from Aberfoyle that season 'after a most exciting contest', the deciding match having taken place at the neutral venue of Buchlyvie. To each of the four winners of the Lady Cayzer Cup, her ladyship gifted 'a beautiful case of silver tea spoons'.

Agnes Cayzer was wife of Sir Charles Cayzer, see here, the Glasgow ship owner, who died in 1916. She herself died in November 1919. In the years which followed, the Cup which bears her name became the premier summer ice competition of clubs in the district. A minute book, still in the possession of the Buchlyvie summer ice players, records the following clubs playing for the Lady Cayzer Cup in the 1930s: Buchlyvie, Kippen, Drumlean, Killearn, Balfron, Gartmore, Renagaur, Aberfoyle, and Brig o' Turk. As many as fourteen clubs have played at various times.

In 1939, the Stirling Observer of December 7, records that the Buchlyvie Summer Ice club met on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings.

According to the Killearn Courier in 2006 only Aberfoyle, Buchlyvie, Gartmore and Kippen were playing summer ice in that year. The last AGM of the Forth and Endrick Summer Ice League was held on November 6, 2012, with only three clubs expressing interest, Aberfoyle having dropped out.

And sixteen years on from Melanie Reid's article, I was to discover that summer ice is still being enjoyed, although only Buchlyvie is continuing the tradition of regular play.

Last Wednesday evening I was invited to visit the village hall in Buchlyvie, to see the game for myself.

Buchlyvie is situated some fifteen miles west of the city of Stirling. The village hall was built in 1884, and today is home for many activities, including the playing of summer ice!

Eileen Mayhew was my contact. She suggested I arrive at the hall in time to see the preparations for the evening's play. One of the first jobs to be carried out was to warm the stones! Here they are over the radiator. Just as in curling, there are eight stones for each side, two per player.

Silicone polish is used on the table these days, and there's a little modern help with the job that used to have to be carried out by hand. Eileen soon had everything ready for the arrival of the other players.
A fire in 1984 resulted in the loss of Buchlyvie's original summer ice table. What is played on now is the table that used to be at Balfron. The playing surface itself is a single plank of wood some 22 feet in length. The table has a room to itself in the village hall.

If you look closely you can see that the table is marked out with the house, and also smaller circles to assist the playing of 'points'. Note too the 'ditch' to catch the stones that fly off the playing area.

Eileen lines up her shot.

The 'stick' is used to give direction.

A tense end!

Stones must be played down the middle of the table, the points markings assisting with that.

Just over the hog!

Keeping score.  Fifteen ends were played in the game. This was played with great skill, and with lots of enthusiasm!

No measures were needed in the game I watched. Had one been needed it would have been carried out with dividers, as shown here with two older stones.

And here are the regular summer ice players at Buchlyvie. L-R: Richard, Alistair, Fergus, Eileen, Jimmy, Billy and Tam. Just seven of them now, but ..... magnificent!

So, what does the future hold for summer ice?

Thanks to Eileen and the other members of the club for their warm welcome last week. Photos are by Bob. The Jemima Wedderburn painting images are © National Galleries of Scotland. The newspaper clippings are © British Library Board, via the British Newspaper Archive. The hard copy of Melanie Reid's article is in the possession of Eileen Mayhew who was present when Melanie visited Buchlyvie in 2002. My special thanks go to Judy Mackenzie, without whose help this article would not have been possible.

December and Christmas is a happy time for many. But for others, there are never to be forgotten anniversaries at this time of year. The terrorist bombing of Pan Am flight 103, with the loss of 243 passengers and sixteen crew as well as eleven people on the ground, happened on December 21, 1988. Among the passengers were 35 students from Syracuse University returning home for Christmas following a semester studying in London.

If anything good can be said to have come out of such a tragedy, it is the links that have been forged between Syracuse University and the town of Lockerbie, particularly the scholarship programme which gives the opportunity for two students from Lockerbie to study at SU each year. Even that programme has had a sad anniversary this month. Andrew McClune was one of those from Lockerbie who took part in the programme in 2002-03, but on December 13, 2002, Andrew died as a result of injuries sustained in a fall at a student residence.

Andrew was a keen curler, having played for many years at the Lockerbie rink, just across the road from his school. He is not forgotten. For example, the Andrew McClune memorial trophy is played for by Dumfries and Galloway schools each season.

There's someone else who has good reason to remember Andrew. Jeff Lutz was in his first year at Syracuse University in 2002. He too was a curler. Growing up in Bloomfield Hills, in suburban Detroit, he had begun curling in 1998 in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, at the Roseland Golf and Curling Club. He spent the next two years crossing the border to learn the game. In late 1999, he became the fifth player with an Ohio junior team and took part in the 2000 US Junior Championships in Bemidji, Minnesota.

Headed to Syracuse to study, Jeff left his broom and curling gear at home. When Andrew and Jeff crossed paths and realised they had a common interest in the sport of curling, the pair hit it off and became good friends. Jeff learned that Andrew wanted to put together a University curling team, so he phoned his mother to ask her to ship his curling shoes and brushes to Syracuse!

This is the team that Andrew and Jeff put together. L-R: Adam Duke, Andrew McClune, Jeff Lutz, Jon Mason. This photo was taken in November 2002, at the Utica Curling Club.

After Andrew's death, the remaining three curlers decided that they would still take part in the US Collegiate Championships in St Paul, Minnesota, in Andrew's memory, and three months after Andrew's death they played in the competition as a three-man team. The story is here.

Jeff Lutz continued to curl whilst finishing his studies at Syracuse, and in the years that followed. Fast forward a few years to 2014. The Israel Curling Federation was back in the WCF family, thanks particularly to the work by Sharon Cohen and Simon Pack on the ground in Israel with a wheelchair curling programme. When Jeff saw that Israel was an official, active WCF member, he made contact with Simon and suggested that he might help build a men's team for play. He says, "I saw the Israel curling opportunity as a global one - with North America being one of the epicenters of growth."

After a week-long recruiting trip in the USA and Canada, the ICF recruiters identified some fifteen men and five women as possible future team members. Jeff Lutz was one of these.

After try-outs, a men's team was put together, see here, and this rink came through the European 'C' Championships to earn a place in the 'B' Division at Champery/Monthey in 2014, finishing with a two win, four loss, record. Jeff played second on that team. The following year, in Esbjerg, Jeff was in the squad that finished with a six win, five loss, record. The five were Adam Freilich, Leonid Rivkind, Ariel Krasik-Geiger, Jeff Lutz, and Gabriel Kempenich. Last month, at the Le Gruyere European Curling Championships at Braehead, Team Israel, with the same five player squad as 2015, made it to the playoff stages of the 'B' Division but lost out to the experienced Netherlands team in the semis, and to the Czech Republic in the bronze medal game, eventually having to settle for a six win, four loss record, over the event. All the results and linescores can be found here.

Jolene Latimer, who was a winner of the WCF Sports Media Trainee Programme and attended the Braehead event last month, wrote this feature about Team Israel.

This is a photo of Jeff Lutz at the Greenacres rink, where the team practised prior to the recent European Championships at Braehead. Now thirty-two years of age, married to Dana, holding dual US and Israeli citizenship, and Director, Marketing and Communications with TRIARQ Health, based in Troy, Michigan, Jeff has come a long way since 2002 when he was a first-year student at Syracuse.

He has not forgotten Andrew McClune. When the European Championships were over, Jeff found the time to catch a train to Lockerbie, and pay respects to his friend.


Thanks to Sandy Scott. And to Jeff for sharing his memories. The photo of the Syracuse team is by Lawrence Mason. Jeff's photo at Greenacres is by Sharon Cohen.

Yes, it's a Christmas greeting on an old postcard which depicts a curling scene.

I enjoy collecting postcards which show our sport of curling - I suspect that makes me a 'curling deltiologist' - and I know I'm not the only one! I've written about my hobby before, see here.

Sending postcards was most popular in the early years of the twentieth century, and lots of cards survive from that era. Collecting postcards is a hobby that appeals to many, for all sorts of reasons, see here.

I have the same curling postcard, without the 'A Happy Christmas' greeting.

The postcard is a Raphael Tuck and Sons 'Oilette'. 'Oilettes' were a type of card produced by Tuck from around 1903, with a facsimile of an artist's work. The history of the Tuck company is here.

The curling card is one of six in series number 9235, 'The Humour of Life'. The other cards in this series are 'A Member of the Goose Club', 'Hurrah! For the Holidays', 'Misfortunes Never Come Singly', 'The Hamper He Got', and 'The Wrong Hamper'. The set was printed in England, and sold in Britain and the USA. The reverse of my card above has a Canada stamp, and was sent within that country, so perhaps it was also sold in Canada. The postmark is smudged, and I cannot decipher when it was sent. Apparently this card set was being used in December 1906, see here.

The card was listed in Tuck's 1908-09 catalogue, and again in 1912.

The back of the card has this note, 'After the black and white drawing by A. Stewart'.

The 'A. Stewart' is the Scottish artist Allan Stewart (1865–1951), well known for his military paintings. The original on which the Tuck postcard is based can be found in the Illustrated London News of Saturday, January 10, 1903, where it is captioned "Soop it up! A Curling Match in Scotland. Drawn by Allan Stewart. When an opponent's stone is likely to settle on the tee, the defending party ply their brooms merrily to smooth the ice and coax the stone to overshoot the mark. Wild cries of "Soop (sweep) it up!" accompany the play, which is well named the roaring game, both from the sound of the stones and of the players' voices."

This explanation seems to show how little the person who wrote the caption knew about the sport. It would indeed make for an interesting game if the opposition was allowed to sweep in front of the tee and coax your stone to travel too far!

However, the caption doesn't detract from Stewart's lively depiction of the game. Tuck's Oilette is a close reproduction of the original, although Allan Stewart's signature has been removed. The original is a black and white drawing, and the colour has been added for the postcard.

The illustration in the Illustrated London News occupies the whole of page 20 of that issue which ran to 37 pages. There is no information about the curling drawing, or the scene on which it was based, in the newspaper, other than the caption. Was the drawing commissioned especially for the paper? 

Here's another version of the postcard, with 'A happy Christmas' printed on the white rectangle at the bottom. As this space appears on the postcard without the greeting, see above, I surmise it is there simply to marry the scale of Stewart's original drawing with the standard dimensions of the postcard.

I wrote an article about 'The Curling Christmas Card' three years ago, see here. That included the image of another seasonal postcard. I closed that article with "David and I wish all followers of the Curling History blog, and indeed all curlers everywhere, 'Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year'."

David is no longer with us, but I will repeat that sentiment here. And add, 'May you ply your brooms merrily!'

Images are of postcards in the author's collection. The image from the Illustrated London News is © Illustrated London News Group via the British Newspaper Archive.

The photo, from the Dundee Courier of January 2, 1928, shows the depth of the ice being checked at the Royal Caledonian Curling Club's pond at Carsebreck, in anticipation of a Grand Match. William Angus of Carsebreck Farm is on the left, with the ruler, and his efforts are being watched by David King, who was supervising preparations for the big match. Although back then just four inches of ice was deemed to be a sufficient thickness for a match to be held, that season it was particularly important that the ice be strong. Some six hundred teams were expected should the Grand Match go ahead!

The pond at Carsebreck had seen 23 Grand Matches since it was first used in 1853. Only one match had been held on the pond since the end of the Great War.

The draw for the 1927-28 Grand Match was published in early November, 1927, the Scotsman, for example, printing the full list of games.

The Dundee Courier, of November 18, 1927, also printed the full draw. There were to be 244 rinks in the North v South match, and 56 rinks for the President v President-elect match. Note that the use of 'rinks' here refers to the number of matchups, and so the number of individual teams expected to appear was 488 for the main match and 112 for the other, ie 600 in total = 2400 curlers.

Local newspapers, such as the Kirkintilloch Gazette of November 25, 1927, noted that the Grand Match was planned for Carsebreck 'if ice permits', and printed just those games which would involve local curling clubs.

By the end of December, excitement was beginning to build that the Grand Match would take place. The Dundee Courier (above) and the Scotsman on December 30 reported that the ice at Carsebreck was nearly four inches thick, with a covering of snow. As it was still freezing, the date of January 4, 1928, was provisionally fixed for the Grand Match.

On January 2 of the new year, the Dundee Courier ran a large article which contains lots of interesting detail for the Grand Match enthusiast today. For example, "Two months ago or more the Railway Companies drew up timetables for long-distance trains to transport the curlers to and from Carsebreck, and so carefully were the advance arrangements made that the whole transport scheme is put into operation at a few hours notice."

Transport to the Carsebreck loch by train had been a key component of the Grand Match since the first match held there in 1853. There was even a special halt on the nearby railway line, see here.

"Every morning for days past, Mr Wm Angus, of Carsebreck Farm, has measured the thickness of the ice on the loch and kept the Royal Club secretary in Edinburgh informed of the daily prospects for the Grand match. At least four inches of ice are required, and the thickness was fully that yesterday, with a slight covering of snow over the expansive surface."

We learn too that David King, foreman platelayer of Stirling Road, Blackford, was the man in charge of preparations at the pond and had a squad of 32 men to mark out the 300 rinks.

The Dundee Courier article noted that the whole area of the loch (60 acres) would be used for the bonspiel. The reporter had calculated that the ice would have to bear some 255 tons, and the marking out of the rinks was carried out 'to ensure an even distribution of weight over the 60 odd acres of ice'.

The article continues, "Small wonder then that the responsible officials make doubly sure of the soundness and thickness of the Carsebreck ice before summoning Scottish curlers to the Grand Match. True, there is a belief that curlers won't drown, but the Royal Caledonian Club take no risks."

On the morning of Monday, January 3, there was 'a fine layer of ice on the loch' and Andrew Hamilton, the Secretary of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club, declared 'Match ON', with play set to begin at 11.30 the following day.

Monday's Dundee Evening Telegraph reported that curlers from Nairn and Kingussie were already en route that afternoon, spending the night in Aberdeen or Perth in order to catch the trains to Carsebreck the next morning. Representatives from Coldstream, Kelso, Jedburgh, Selkirk and Earlston were also on their way from the south, to overnight in Edinburgh.

By all accounts, transport arrangements to Carsebreck worked well. But, unfortunately, the weather did not play ball.

This photo from the following day's Dundee Evening Telegraph shows the problem. On the morning of January 4, it had begun to rain. Those arriving early found that rain had been falling since early morning. It appeared to dry up at one point, and a rainbow appeared. But then the rain began again, in earnest.

The Grand Match was scheduled to begin at 11.30, instead of at mid-day, as in former years. At 11.20 the announcement that the match would not take place was made by megaphone, and to signal this shots were fired. This photo shows the guns being fired to indicate that the match had been called off.

When the Royal Club Annual was published later in the year, the report of the Grand Match began, "The day of the abortive Grand Match of 1928 will long be remembered as a black day in the Annals of Curling, when Jack Frost played an army of curlers a nasty trick by tempting them out in their thousands and then levanting at the last moment, and leaving them soaked and disappointed to take their various homeward ways."

The Annual also reprinted the photo above which shows a number of curlers on the loch, waiting to learn if the match would go ahead. This photo had originally appeared in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News on Saturday, January 14, 1928, with the legend, 'Bonspiel abandoned: The curlers on the pond at Carsebreck'.
The Scotsman of Wednesday, January 4, contained an extensive report of what had happened. Their correspondent wrote, "This has been a black day for Scottish curlers. The Carsebreck bonspiel, the greatest event in the curling world, had to be abandoned at the eleventh hour because of the ice being under water. Before the decision that the bonspiel could not be held was made, 2000 curlers, some of them from remote parts of the country, had arrived here. Curlers have suffered many disappointments through the bonspiel, with its Grand Match having to be put off, but never in the experience of the oldest enthusiasts has it failed to take place when the players had arrived at Carsebreck.

The bonspiel, unfortunately, could not be cancelled earlier. Conditions seemed all that could be desired last night and early this morning. A sheet of ice five inches thick covered the spacious loch, and, although a dampness lay on the ice, there was no water until the rain began about six o'clock. The markings of the rinks up till then were quite distinct. A fresh wind which began to blow at ten o'clock last night proved the forerunner of this morning's rain, which showed no signs of abating when the time for play drew near. With a sheet of water, inches deep in parts, covering the rinks, it was decided, ten minutes before the bonspiel was due to start, that play would be impossible. A deluge of rain was falling at the time, the rink markings had long since been obliterated, and there was also the prospect of the loch becoming dangerous for curlers."

The Editorial in the Annual for 1928-29 reflected, "The disappointment to the Secretary and his staff of assistants after all their multifarious work in organising and preparing for the Grand Match, and the chagrin occasioned to the huge concourse of curlers that assembled on the margin of the club's pond, was like a huge practical joke perpetrated by natural forces against the curling fraternity, and shows that curling is, in more senses than one, 'a slippery game'. The contretemps brought out the sport's manlike spirit of the curling army that had mustered 'boden in fier of war' (equipped for war) beside the battlefield, only 'to find nae field to fecht in' (no field to fight in); and those who had often proved that they knew how to play the game, showed that they furthermore knew how, on occasion, not to play it."

A correspondent simply describing himself 'Anthony' contributed the following to the Edinburgh Evening News of January 5, 1928. "The scene was a strange one. The great loch stretched into a faint haar, and the trees on the banks of a hill on the horizon were likewise mist-kissed, having a quaint, ghostly appearance. Hills on all sides lost themselves in their burdens of mist - grey, clinging, soaking mist which matched and met the sky low down.

The rain was the kind of rain that doesn't dance off your mackintosh, but creeps down your neck and burrows up your sleeve. It came from all directions. You stood on the rain, you walked about with the rain, you breathed in the rain.

The curlers were attired in all sorts of rig-out. Some were in kilts. A large number wore Balmoral bonnets. Amongst the whole two thousand present, only one was noticed with an umbrella."

A few adventurous curlers threw some stones, despite the conditions. The Dundee Courier reported, "Stones were tried on the ice, but miniature geysers sprang from them as they went their way."

This photo shows many of the disappointed curlers headed back to the railway platform. The pond is in the distance, and the Royal Club Secretary's hut, the only building on site, can be seen top right.

This photo in the Dundee Evening Telegraph is captioned, "Lord Kinnaird of Rossie Priory and his factor, Mr Macdonald, taking their curling equipment to the station by sledge." One has to imagine that it must have become rather muddy! How stones were transported has been discussed before, see here, and the photo shows that Lord Kinnaid and his factor had two stones in separate boxes, and two in baskets.

For the departing curlers it had been arranged that nine special trains would take curlers away from Carsebreck after the bonspiel. The first of these had been due to leave at 14.55, after the curling was over. However, with the cancellation of the match, the timings were all brought forward, and very quickly all curlers were on their way home!

To make sure that everyone caught the correct train, several enclosures had been erected alongside the platform, to separate the passengers for the different trains, and to avoid overcrowding and crushing.

This photo from the Annual of 1928-29 carries no explanation. The Sunday Post, a few days later on January 8, printed a similar scene, explaining, "The curlers took the news of the abandonment of the bonspiel very philosophically. The contents of their knapsacks were immediately ransacked, and it was not their oversocks that they passed around to their friends."

The Scotsman similarly reported how the players reacted to the cancellation of the match, "Keen though their disappointment must have been, they received the decision philosophically, in the true curling spirit. Curlers are, of course, used to the caprices of the weather, and the decision was not unexpected; yet at the same time it was satisfactory to note the spirit in which it was taken and to hear such remarks as 'Better luck next time'.

The 'beef and greens' part of the curlers' traditional dish was lacking, but the liquid with which that repast ought to be washed down, according to the unwritten laws of curling, was not, and that, no doubt, offered some consolation for the unhappy day."

Not all of the competitors travelled to Carsebreck by train. By 1928, other transport options were available. One player travelled to the venue by car, and later complained that because of a lack of signs, he took the wrong road and had to carry his stones more than a mile to the pond side!

Those who travelled by bus had an exciting journey, according to the above account.

The final irony on that day in January 1928 was that, in the afternoon after everyone had left, a group of curlers from the Kincardine Castle CC, whose secretary lived in nearby Auchterarder, returned to the pond and played for three hours. According to the Dundee Courier, "The ice was in fairly good condition, and keen stones were thrown, while the ice was otherwise deserted." The paper recorded the names of the players. James Fleming and James Eadie were the skips, and the other players were E Forrester, James Reid, T Callum, John McNee, H Elliot and James Dow.
 
The following season saw the staging of a successful Grand Match at Carsebreck. Read the story of that match on the Royal Club website here. 

The Prince's Skating Club in Knightsbridge, London, opened on November 7, 1896. The artificial ice rink was installed in a refurbished building, the new interior by JM Boekbinder, a well known decorator of the time. The large ice surface was rectangular, in contrast to other ice skating rinks in London which were circular in shape, according to the Morning Post newspaper.

The Princes Skating Club was a private club, and was a great success. Membership in the early years was ten guineas - around £1000 today. Two years after opening, the interior of the building was renovated, and the artwork redone by M Picat with an Egyptian theme throughout. In charge of the ice was WW Nightingale who had been manager of the Southport Glaciarium some years previously.

Although curling had been mentioned from the start as a possible recreation alongside ice skating, it was not until 1902 that the sport began to be played at Prince's. In November 1902, a Scottish newspaper, the Bellshill Speaker, described the Prince's Skating Club as 'a rendezvous of fashionable society', but 'it was not inhospitable' being available on one day a week to the curling club. The curling club in question was the London Caledonian CC.

The Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual for 1902-03 included in its review of the 1901-02 season, the following, "Last winter much enjoyment was afforded to Scotsmen resident in London by the formation of the London Caledonian Club which was formed for the purpose of playing in the Glaciarium. The president was the redoubtable Mr Samuel Gibson, while the secretaries were Mr Nightingale, the pioneer of ice rinks, and Mr RH Forsyth. Some splendid play was had, and the club, we understand, is to affiliate with the Royal Club.

This form of curling is evidently to be developed, for at the time of writing we notice this announcement in the Scotsman: LONDON'S INDOOR GAME. An effort is to be made this winter to introduce indoor curling as an additional attraction at the Prince's Skating Club, Knightsbridge. The club is one of the most exclusive in London, and this year was the venue of the world's figure skating championships, the King being present during a portion of the competition.

The idea of a curling section in connection with the Knightsbridge institution has been very favourably entertained, already over two hundred members having joined, among whom are some of the best curlers in Scotland - Lord Balfour of Burleigh, General Stephenson and Captain Wentworth.

It is hoped to make the Scottish national winter pastime very popular in London this season. There is abundance of space at the club for curling, the rink measuring 214 feet by 65 feet, which will allow of four games being played simultaneously. The ice is procured by the ammonia process. A couple of days are needed to make the first ice of the season; thereafter a new surface can be provided in little over an hour. A sum of between £200 and £300 weekly is spent on the upkeep of the ice and the building generally.

There is no doubt that such facilities for the practice of curling must prove a great boon to Scotsmen and others in the great Metropolis. By and by it might be possible to return the hospitality now offered by Canada to our team by entertaining Canadians in London where we can be as certain as they are of ice by the device of Glaciaria."

So, the London Caledonian Curling Club was formed during the winter of 1901-02. It did indeed become affiliated to the Royal Club in 1902, and the club met weekly at the Prince's Skating Club. Their 1902-03 season opened on October 30, 1902, as reported in the Scotsman the following day.

There were seventy-one regular members and eighteen honorary members in that first season according to the Annual for 1902-03. The club's patrons included the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, the Duke of Roxburghe, the Earl of Rosebery, the Earl of Dalkeith and the Earl of Mansfield.

The Dundee Courier of January 27, 1903, noted that the London Caledonian had 'made its home' at the Prince's Rinks and, "On one night a week since the opening of the season some very enjoyable games have been witnessed by spectators who seemed just as much interested and enthusiastic as the curlers themselves. As four full sized rinks can be accommodated at a time, it will be at once apparent that it is actually the real thing and not a make-believe, as some good people imagine."

This last sentence would indicate that there was some scepticism about play on indoor artificial ice, most curling in the early years of the twentieth century still being played outside.

It should be said here that in 1903 the Prince's Skating Rink was the only indoor rink for curling in the whole of Britain. Curling had been played on artificial ice in 1877 at the short-lived ice rink in Rusholme, Manchester, see here. The Southport Glaciarium was more successful, hosting curling and skating between 1877 and 1889, see here. Scotland's first indoor rink, to host curling on a regular basis, would be at Crossmyloof, Glasgow. This rink opened in 1907.

By November 1903, the Prince's Skating Club had a new owner, the Duchess of Bedford, who had purchased the site, the buildings, and the plant. Mary Russell, the Duchess of Bedford, seems to have been a most interesting character, see here and here. Remembered these days as a pioneer aviator, when she was younger she was a keen sportswoman and an accomplished figure skater.

Thursday seems to have been the day on which the London Caledonian members played. As well as curling and skating, the rink was used for ice hockey.

This photo was printed in the Penny Illustrated Paper of April 13, 1907, and captioned 'Curling Championships at Prince's. The annual competition by the English Province of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. Players applauding a good shot'! This photo had been taken during competition for the I'Anson trophy, held again at the Knightsbridge rink in April, 1907.

In February 1908 it was announced that the Duchess of Bedford had donated a challenge trophy for a competition at the Princes Skating Club, 'open to all clubs in the world, affiliated with the Royal Caledonian Curling Club'. The first competition for the Duchess of Bedford Shield was held April 21-25, 1908. Perhaps this first open event at Prince's was not as successful as it might have been, most English clubs having chosen to play in the I'Anson Trophy at the new Scottish Ice Rink at Crossmyloof in Glasgow, also held in April that year. In the years which followed the Duchess of Bedford Shield competition at the Princes Skating Club grew in popularity.

In October 1908, the figure skating events at the London Olympic Games took place at the Prince's Skating Club, see here.

When David Smith wrote his book Curling: an illustrated history, published in 1981, he was unaware of curling at the Prince's Skating Club rink. However, sometime later he acquired 'a group of stereoscopic lantern slides of a very small format', and wrote about his discovery in the May 2008 Scottish Curler magazine. In that article he noted that they dated, apparently, from 1910.

These remarkable photographs show the glass roof, the murals on the walls around the rink, and certainly give an impression of the grandeur of the place.

And they vividly show what the curling in the rink looked like, and what the players were wearing. Note the different types of brooms in use.

Play was from the crampit.

David's research led him to believe that the action depicted was from the Duchess of Bedford Shield competition, and that at least some of the players were from the Newcastle-on-Tyne and/or the Newcastle Tyneside curling clubs, both of which were taking part in the competition in 1910.

The Duchess of Bedford Shield competition was won that year by a Huddersfield team, here posing for a photograph for the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News.

In season 1910-11, the Prince's Skating Club became home to a second curling club, called simply the 'Prince's Curling Club'. According to the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer of April 10, 1911, "This club has grown with astonishing rapidity, some of its most enthusiastic players being drawn from the Scots Guards." This club played on the rink on Saturdays. In the Annual for 1911-12, the Prince's Club had nineteen regular and thirteen occasional members. By comparison, the London Caledonian CC had fifty regular and five occasional members. It is interesting to note that several curlers were members of both clubs - suggesting that the new club had been formed to satisfy a demand for more curling, and not because of any dispute amongst London Caledonian members.

Remarkably, here is a photograph of four members of the Prince's CC, albeit that is is not of high quality. The team above (L-R: HJ Betts, BG Adams, HW Page and AW Leslie-Lickley, skip) had won the Club Championship in the 1911-12 season as well as the Vice-president's prize for the rink having the largest number of wins in Club events during the season. They also met and defeated rinks representing Bedford, Grindelwald (twice), London Caledonians, and Wimbledon. Taking part in twenty-one matches, they won seventeen, lost three, and drew one.

AW Leslie-Lickley, on the right of the photograph, was the Secretary of the Prince's CC.

Curling continued at the Prince's rink at least until January 1915. I suspect that all ice activities finished at this time, with WW1 in progress.

Thereafter the venue was used for a variety of exhibitions. In October 1915 there was a display of Christmas toys, the work of disabled soldiers in the Lord Roberts' Memorial Workshops. And on March 18, 1916, an 'active service exhibition' opened at the venue to give Londoners and visitors to the city 'an opportunity of seeing for themselves exactly what trench warfare is like'!

The Prince's Skating Club was let to the British Red Cross Society in May 1917. 

What the rink was like then can be seen in this painting by Haydn Reynolds Mackey (1881–1979). This can be studied in more detail on the ArtUK website here. The painting is titled, 'Prince's Skating Rink, Knightsbridge, London, during the War: British Red Cross Society Store'.

In May 1919, the war over, the Sketch reported that the Daimler Hire Company had taken over the Prince's Skating Club building with a view to turning it into a large garage and hiring depot. The building no longer exists, having been replaced by housing. I have looked in vain (so far) for an image of the outside of the building.

Where exactly was the rink? It was on Hill Street, which has since been re-named as Trevor Place, between Montpelier Square and Knightsbridge, just south of the Hyde Park Barracks. The map above, from 1914, although not published until 1936, names the building.

The top image is © Illustrated London News Group, and made available via the British Newspaper Archive, as are the other newspaper clippings. The BNA was the source of much of the information in this article. The photograph of the Leslie-Lickey team is by News Illustrations Company, London, as printed in the Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual for 1912-13.  The Haydn Reynolds Mackey is from the ArtUK website, and credited to the Imperial War Museums. The London map is from the National Library of Scotland's maps website, here.

The first curling book that I ever acquired was Beginner's Guide to Curling by Robin Welsh, back in 1969. Therein I learned that curling had been introduced to Sweden by a Scot, William Andrew Macfie. Since I became interested in curling history, I have often wondered about Macfie. Who was he, and how did he come to settle in Sweden? Where had he curled previously in Scotland, and did any records of that exist? And was he really single-handedly responsible for curling's introduction to Sweden, and the establishment of the country's first curling club in 1852? Hakan kindly sent me translation of the first chapters of the anniversary book, which contain information about Macfie. Hakan notes that Macfie's history in Sweden had to do with love, and 'hungry horses'. I was intrigued, and so set off to see what else I could find from here in Scotland.

The genealogy of the Macfie family is a complicated one, but has been well researched. For our curling connection, we should pick up the family with two of the daughters of Robert Macfie (1745/46 - 1827). It was Robert Macfie who started a grocery concern in Greenock in 1769 which evolved into a successful sugar refining business. He married Mary Andrew in 1772. The couple had eleven children, not all of whom survived into adulthood. Among those who did were Margaret, who was born in August, 1774, and Janet (known as Jessy) who was born in September 1790, the eleventh of the recorded children. Robert Macfie bought Langhouse, in Inverkip, in 1798.

The older sister, Margaret, married a seaman called James Macfie in 1799. It seems not to be known if James Macfie, with the same surname, was kin, or from a different branch of the family. The couple had four children, William Andrew Macfie (our Swedish curling pioneer) being born on March 21, 1807. His father apparently was lost at sea that same year. William then was brought up by his mother, a single parent.

The younger sister, Jessy, married, on August 3, 1813, William Thorburn, who was the eldest son of William Thorburn of Leith, a successful tea merchant. The Thorburn and Macfie families were already related, as John Macfie, the third son of Robert Macfie, had married Alison Thorburn, second daughter of William Thorburn of Leith, in 1810.

William and Jessy's fourth child, called Jessie, was born on October 18, 1818. They were to have ten children, all bar one surviving into adulthood. The family moved to Sweden in 1823. Jonas Berg and Bo Lagercrantz in their book Scots in Sweden published by the Swedish Institute, Stockholm, in 1962, explain why. William's younger brother, James, had emigrated to Gothenburg where he became a wholesale merchant. With a fellow Scot, William Brodie, he ran the wholesale firm of Brodie and Thorburn. But he ran into financial difficulties, and his older brother William was sent over to Sweden to 'clear things up'. Apparently William liked the country so much that he bought the estate of Kasen, outside Uddevalla (on the west coast of Sweden north of Gothenburg). According to Berg and Lagercrantz, William Thorburn brought his wife and young family to Sweden in 1823. Jessie, the daughter, would have been just four or five years old when the move to Sweden was made.

Back in Scotland, Margaret Macfie was raising her son William Andrew. According to this web page, about 1815 a considerable share in the business of Macfie, Lindsay and Company was given to her, to assist her in bringing up her family. A few years later William Andrew entered the concern as an apprentice, and he subsequently became a partner in it and remained with the firm until 1837, when he was thirty years old. Just what his business interests were then, and how he supported himself financially at this time, is not clear.

Presumably Macfie had met his first cousin, Jessie Thorburn, from Sweden, on family gatherings in previous years. Whatever the details of their courtship, the couple were married in Leith on January 16, 1839. Jessie was twenty-one, and her husband ten years older. Given that the birth records of their first three children can be found in the parish records of Greenock West church, it can be assumed that for the first few years of their married lives they lived in the Greenock area. In these records, William Andrew Macfie is described as a 'merchant'.

According to Hakan Sundstrom's research, the couple lived in Scotland for a while, but Jessie missed Sweden, and wanted to be near her parents. In 1845 they emigrated and settled down on a farm at Anfasteröd, twenty kilometres south of Uddevalla, and close to Kasen where her mother was.
 
This map is to show just where in Sweden Uddevalla is.

By 1845 the couple had had four children. Their first child, James, born in Greenock in 1840, was to die in Sweden in 1846. Their second son, William, born in 1841, had only lived for a few months. Margaret, a daughter born in 1844, only lived for three years. One can surmise that the couple's early years in Sweden were not a happy time. But they were to go on to have thirteen children, although only five survived to adulthood.

Macfie's father in law, William Thorburn, had established an export company in 1823 on his move to Sweden. The company also had shipping interests. In 1845, when William Andrew Macfie, now 38, arrived in Sweden, his cousins William Franklin Thorburn and Robert Thorburn were just 25 and 17 years of age. These two were to take over the family business when their father died in 1851.

Where do the 'hungry horses' come into things? One of the Thorburn interests was grain export. In England, London's population grew rapidly in Victorian times. Above ground transport generally, and the movement of goods around the city, depended entirely on horses, see here. And all these horses needed to be fed. Swedish oats were in demand!

By the 1870s, oat exports from Sweden contributed some 17% of the country's total exports, and the Thorburn company contributing more that a quarter of this, see here. It was very profitable for the family.

Given that his wife's brothers, who were also his cousins, were running the company, it is certainly likely that Macfie, somewhat older, became involved in that business enterprise too. Exactly what Macfie's role in the company was, and what his other business activities in Sweden were, remain to be researched. Hakan Sundstrom notes that Macfie became a wealthy businessman.

So, what about Macfie's curling antecedents? Hakan Sundstrom writes, "Macfie was a curler and curling stones were in the household that year, and he began playing with these on frozen lakes in the area. It took a few years for William Andrew Macfie to spread his curling interest to friends in the neighborhood in Uddevalla, but on March 5, 1852, Bohuslänska Curlingklubben was formed as the first curling club in Europe outside the United Kingdom."The Bohuslän Curling Club still exists and has active teams in the second division of the Swedish league system.

But was Macfie really a curler before emigrating to Sweden? That has been impossible to prove, so far. Growing up in Renfrewshire in the early nineteenth century, Macfie would certainly have been aware of curling. Of the clubs in the neighbourhood of Greenock, Ardgowan, instituted in 1841, is the oldest, but Macfie's name does not appear when lists of members were first printed in Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annuals. What, if any, curling Macfie played in Scotland prior to his marriage and relocation to Sweden remains unknown. 

Was the introduction of curling to Uddevalla just Macfie's idea alone? That suggestion deserves more scrutiny. His cousins would certainly have known of the game. William Thorburn had been sent back to Scotland for his schooling. Interestingly, William Thorburn is credited along with Macfie with the introduction of curling to Sweden, see here, and by Jonas Berg and Bo Lagercrantz in their book Scots in Sweden. Early documents from the Bohuslänska Curlingklubben are now in the archives of the Bohuslän museum in Uddevalla, and it will be interesting to see if there were any other Scots involved with the club in its earliest years.

Macfie was certainly a driving force. Hakan Sundrom writes, "In addition to the curling stones Macfie imported from Scotland, members of Bohuslän also tried to get Swedish stone manufacture. 'Granite company C A Kullgren's Enka' in Uddevalla made some stones in the hard granite. They were well made and beautiful but when they began to play with them, it turned out that the granite was not sufficiently elastic to withstand the tough hits." The company to which Hakan refers has a Wikipedia entry, see here. I wonder if any of these early curling stones have found a home in the Bohuslän museum, or elsewhere?

The Bohuslänska Curlingklubben attracted those in the upper level of society from Uddevalla, and received royal patronage. This tidbit comes from Scots in Sweden, "The game was played in furs and silk-hats, often to the accompaniment of music by the Regimental Band."

Hakan writes much more about the Bohuslänska Curlingklubben, how efforts were made to spread the sport, and how it eventually became established, leading to the formation of a national organisation. But all this will be for another time.

I will finish here with just a little more about William Andrew Macfie. He died in 1899, his wife Jessie having passed away in 1883. A photo of him has survived.

The anniversary book contains this image which shows curling on the river which flows through Uddevalla. It is captioned 'Members of Bohuslänska Curlingklubben play on the river ice in Uddevalla'. Amongst those who can be identified is William Andrew Macfie, who is third from the right (asterisked), and Robert Thorburn furthest to the left. Commissioner Aberg is playing the stone.

Robert Thorburn died in 1896, so the photo must date from before this time. And it is proof that William Andrew Macfie retained his interest in curling well into his old age.

There is a Thorburn-Macfie family society in Sweden established in 1937 which today unites some several hundred descendants of the Macfie and Thorburn famililies, see here. I wonder if any of them have information of William Andrew Macfie's life in Sweden.

My thanks to Hakan Sundstrom for translating his chapters from Svenskcurlingforbundet 1916-2016 and allowing me to quote them. The photos above are from the book. 

Scots in Sweden by Jonas Berg and Bo Lagercrantz was published by the Swedish Institute, Stockholm, in 1962 to go with a similarly titled exhibition at the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh in the summer of that year. I consulted the book at the National Library of Scotland.

The detailed genealogy of the Macfie family can be found here. I was able to find birth records of William and Jessie's family thanks to the Scotland's People website.

The map of Sweden is courtesy of Google maps.

Thomas Blackwood Murray was one of the best curlers in the first half of the twentieth century in Scotland. He played second in the GB team, skipped by Willie Jackson, which won the first gold medals to be awarded for curling at the 1924 Olympic Winter Games in Chamonix. These days his name is most often remembered in association with the 'Murray Trophy', above, which is being played for this very week (January 18-22, 2017) as the Scottish Junior Men's Championship is contested at Curl Aberdeen.

Murray was born October 3, 1877, in Biggar, South Lanarkshire. He came from a farming background and began curling at his local curling club at the end of the nineteenth century. His father, R G Murray, was a prominent curler of the time. Tom Murray was a member of the Scottish teams which toured Canada in 1911-12, and again in 1922-23.

Tom Murray played with Willie Jackson in many competitions. For example, here he is, on the right, as a member of the winning team of the first 'Worlds Championship' at Edinburgh in 1922, the competition that became the Edinburgh International Curling Championship, see here. The full team is (l-r) Willie Jackson (skip), Robert Jackson (lead), Laurence Jackson (2nd) and Tom Murray (3rd).

And here he is, on the hack in Montreal in 1923.

He served as President of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1936-37. He died on June 3, 1944. His obituary can be found in the Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual for 1944-45 which says, "Since he took part as a member of his father's rink in the match when Biggar Province defeated the first Canadian Team to Scotland, he has been chosen to represent his club or his country in every important match which has taken place. As a curler his skill was outstanding and he was always recognised as one of the best players Scotland has ever produced. His sportsmanship was widely appreciated, his hospitality was unbounded and his geniality made any meeting with him a pleasure not soon forgotten. He held many offices in the curling world and took very special pride in his election as President of the Royal Club in 1936. He threw himself wholeheartedly into all the work entailed by that position."

He was a gifted after dinner speaker. Apparently he often referred to the 'wonderful brotherhood of curling, which appealed to him in no ordinary degree'!

In April 1926, at the end of season prizegiving  at the Haymarket rink, Tom Murray's team had won the Director's Trophy. He used his acceptance speech to suggest that there should be more encouragement of younger curlers, saying, "He had noticed over and over again good young players who could be made excellent players but they were not getting in to the best rinks to show their ability."

Murray's comments were picked up by the sub-editor on the Scotsman's sport's desk, and the report of the prizegiving in the paper on Monday, April 12, 1926, had the headline, 'A Plea for Young Men'!

Tom Murray's enthusiasm for encouraging young curlers led him to present the trophy that now bears his name. It was first played for in 1929 for competition by curlers of 25 years of age and under.

Here is a photo of the trophy from a newspaper of the time.

The Annual for 1929-30 contains a report of the activities at the Edinburgh Ice Rink in the previous season. This says, "Both veterans and juniors were well to the fore at the close of a very successful season of the Edinburgh Ice Rink. A new departure was instituted by Mr T B Murray in the form of a competition for juniors."

The Annual goes on to reprint what had been written in the Scotsman of April 15, 1929, "With a view to stimulating interest in curling among young players, and in order to give them an opportunity of becoming skilful at the game, the Edinburgh Ice Rink Club held a competition for junior curlers. Mr T B Murray, Biggar, the chief promoter of the scheme, gifted a Cup for competition. The success which has attended the venture was commented upon by several prominent curlers at a smoking concert held in the Ice Rink, to mark the closing of the rink, and for the presentation of trophies won during the past season.

Sir Robert C Lockhart, Chairman of the Ice Rink Club, in presenting the T B Murray Trophy to Linlithgow Club, said they owed a very deep debt of gratitude to the donor. That was a pet scheme of Mr Murray's, and he had spent an enormous amount of time and trouble to foster the game among young players.

Mr Jackson said he had watched some of the matches, and he admired the way the boys were playing, not because of the skill being displayed but because they were using their heads all the time. That was the way to become expert at the business. Some of them had a great future before them in curling. It must be very gratifying to the donor of the Cup to see 14 rinks of young players come up. For a great many years past they had had practically no new blood coming into the curling world, and there was no doubt that the Cup had done what the donor intended it to do. He thanked the older members who had coached the boys, some of whom, he predicted, would play for their country.

Mr Murray said it was five years ago since he raised the question of the young players in that room. It was well received, but nothing seemed to come of it, and they thought they had better get a move on. He had the good fortune to be allowed to present a Cup for the competition. They thought they would be lucky to get 10 or 12 rinks, but 65 boys came up, and, as the Chairman had said, 14 rinks competed. He was pleased to hear a prominent curler like Mr Jackson say that the boys played so well. It was fine to know that their old game would go on when they were no longer there. But there was no good, he continued, in having a nursery for the young players unless these were assimilated into the various rinks. He appealed to the older curlers and skips to take one, or two, if they could, into their rinks. They could be taken into the inter-city match, and some might even play in the international."

Here are the winners of that first competition for the 'Murray Trophy'. From left, clockwise: A Paris (3rd), J Morrison (2nd),  I McKnight (lead), and J Oliphant (skip), from the Linlithgow Curling Club. Merchiston CC, skipped by A Allan, with W Roberts, W Ainslie and J Nisbet, were runners-up having lost to Linlithgow 16-9 in the final.

The competition ran successfully in the Edinburgh Ice Rink at Haymarket until 1935 when, for some unexplained reason, it just died. The trophy was handed over for senior competition at the rink.

In the late 1950s, Jock Waugh, of the Corstorphine CC, who had played in some of the pre-war competitions, proposed that the cup be returned and used for its original purpose, to encourage junior play. This proposal was supported by the Edinburgh Ice Rink Curling Club and in the 1958-59 season, notice was sent out to all Scottish Ice Rinks inviting entries.

Teams from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Pertth and Kirkcaldy played eliminating ties locally before coming to Edinburgh for the final stages. Two Glasgow based teams, skipped by Robin Campbell and by Alex F Torrance (aka 'Wee Alex'), contested the final. The Scottish Curler of April, 1959, reported, "The quality of their curling was a revelation. All eight players made light of a tricky sheet of ice to play a series of man-sized ends, including many fine, and some brilliant, shots. Three ends from home, at a time when Alex Torrance was making a fighting bid to come back into the game, skip Robin Campbell played a draw which won this match and could have won any match - a full draw through a difficult port to the tee."
 
Here is the presentation. L-R: Moira Craig, Hugh Ferguson, J Hutchison, Robin Campbell, James Sellar (Manager of the Edinburgh Rink), Robin Welsh (Secretary of the Royal Club), Alex F Torrance, Robert Kirkland, Alex Torrance and James Waddell.

Note the presence of Moira Craig, the lead on Robin Campbell's winning team, who, according to the Scottish Curler article, " ... with a strong, fluent delivery action, was another star in this fine performance which earned the warm applause of seasoned critics."

Moira, who later married her skip, is the only female name to be found amongst the winners of the Murray Trophy and hence inscribed in a plaque on the base of the trophy. Although a number of girls played in the competition through until 1975, when it became solely the Junior Men's Championship, none were ever again on a winning side.

Incidentally, it may be a surprise to those reading this in 2017 to learn that the members of the winning team in 1959 all received cigarette lighters as individual prizes, presented by Leonard and Norman Tod. Changed days! The runners-up were given tankards donated by Jock Waugh.

In the years between 1959 and 1974, the competition was always thought of as the 'unofficial' Scottish Junior Championship.

Just a little personal nostalgia now. Here's a photo of the 1972 presentation. L-R: Robert Kelly (2nd), David Horton (skip), Willie Wilson (Royal Club President), Robert Cowan (yes, it is me), and Brian Methven. Sadly Brian is no longer with us, and I include this pic in his memory.

Modesty (almost) prevents me from saying that the April 1972 Scottish Curler report of the finals (headlined 'Horton Rink in Devastating Form') called David and I 'two of the brightest prospects in the West'! Apparently I was 'deadly accurate', and Bob and Brian 'gave solid support as the Glasgow rink swept to victory'. David and I each have our names on the trophy five times. And yes, it was a long time ago.

In the 1974-75 season, the competition and the trophy had become officially the Scottish Junior Men's Championship, and Peter Wilson's team were the first winners. Above is the presentation photo. L-R: John Sharp (lead), Peter Wilson (skip), Alan Johnston (Royal Club President), Donald MacRae (Assistant General Manager, Bank of Scotland, sponsors of the competition), Neale McQuistin (2nd) and Andrew McQuistin (3rd). The team were to go forward to play in the first official Uniroyal World Curling Championship.

The list of those who have won the Murray Trophy since 1975 can be found on the Royal Club website here. The origins of world junior curling are discussed here.

The 1922 photo of the Worlds Championship winners comes from a scrapbook in the care of T B Murray's family, as does the image of Tom Murray on the hack in Montreal, and thanks to them for permission to reproduce these. I do not know the photographers. The newspaper image of the Murray Trophy is also from that scrapbook. It was taken by Balmain, Edinburgh, but I do not know in which newspaper it appeared. The photo of the first winners of the Murray Trophy is from the 1929-30 Annual of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club. The photo of the 1959 presentation group is from the author's archive, and featured on the cover of the April, 1959, Scottish Curler magazine. The 1972 photo is from the author's personal archive. The 1975 presentation photo has been scanned from the January, 1975, Scottish Curler. Thanks to Bruce Crawford, the current Royal Club CEO, who allowed me to photograph the trophy at Cairnie House a couple of years ago.

In the 1800s, the railways brought curlers from far and wide to participate in Scotland's great bonspiels. Chief amongst these was the Grand Match. The Royal Club's pond at Carsebreck had its own halt on the nearby railway, see here, and curlers had only a short walk with their stones to get to the ice. Close access to a railway line enabled play on Lochmaben's Castle Loch, and on Castle Semple Loch at Lochwinnoch.

In other places, although the railway brought participants close to a loch or curling pond, there was still some distance to be covered to get to the ice surface itself.

Here's just one example. In January, 1892, planning was well advanced for the Northern Counties Provincial Curling Association's bonspiel on Loch-na-Sanais, near Inverness. The Association's secretary, James A Gossip, ran a large advertisement in the Inverness Courier of January 19, 1892, with the draw involving seventy teams which would take part. Various arrangements had been made with the Highland Railway to facilitate the match. For example, there were to be special fares for players. If necessary, a special carriage would be attached to the goods train departing Inverness for the south at 9.15 pm, for those who intended to attend the evening dinner.

Curling stones were to be carried 'free of charge', but at 'owner's risk'. Each curling stone, or its basket, had to be numbered for its particular rink, and as many as possible forwarded by early trains to facilitate conveyance to the Loch.

The advert stated, "Conveyances will be in readiness at Inverness to convey players and stones to the Loch. Return fare for each player, 1/-."

I wondered what these 'conveyances' would have been like. Loch-na-Sanais was several kilometres from Inverness railway station, and the 'conveyances' mentioned would have been horse drawn. That got me thinking that horses were the unsung heroes of these great curling events. I wondered if there were any stories that mentioned horses in connection with curling bonspiels. I found a number, and here are three examples.

The first is in connection with a match between the curling clubs of Breadalbane Aberfeldy and Weem for a Royal Club District Medal. Both clubs were located near Aberfeldy, and long-time rivals. The match was reported in the newspapers at the time, as shown by the clipping from the Dundee Courier of March 7, 1889, above. Although this was just a match between two clubs, it was a significant bonspiel, each club being represented by six teams of four players each. Royal Club records show that the match, held on Tuesday, March 5, took four hours to complete, and that the umpire was Charles Munro. He was the secretary of the Breadalbane Aberfeldy club. This was all above board, as when awarding the medal for the two clubs to contest, the Royal Club had stipulated 'own umpire'. The venue though was a neutral one, the Logierait pond (here), about 20 km to the east. On the day the ice was 'stiff', and the medal was won by Aberfeldy with a margin of ten shots, 150-140.

That might have been all that we would have known about this match, except that on Saturday, March 30, the London-based Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News ran an article about it. The text was by 'Rockwood' and this accompanied a page of illustrations. The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News was a weekly publication founded in 1874.

One of the illustrations gives a general view of play on the Logierait pond. The author explained that although great bonspiels gave a national character to the game of curling, "... the most enjoyable encounters are those which take place on local ponds between parish and district clubs. Such contests are carried out will all the fierceness and hard fighting of a clan fray, although there is little blood spilling." One of the main functions of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club in the nineteenth century was to promote such inter-club contests, by awarding District Medals for such matches.

Rockwood's article confirms that both sets of curlers, and their stones, had travelled by train, and that the stones had been carted to the pond from nearby Ballinluig station.

I think it is just wonderful that one of the images in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News is that above, with the caption 'Carting the stones from Ballinluig'. Note too that the image showing play on the pond has in the foreground some of the boxes in which the stones must have been transported in the cart. The illustrator was 'J G Temple' whose name can be found on many images in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News of the time.

Three years later, on February 6, 1892, the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News again included a full page montage of illustrations entitled, 'Curling at Aberfeldy and Birnam'. This includes views of play at two different locations, although it is not clear just where these were.

One of the images is of a horse and cart, above, with the caption, 'Up the snow clad hill with the stones'. This is by the same illustrator as before, J G Temple. The illustrations accompany another article by Rockwood about curling in general, and about the rivalry between the Weem CC and the Breadalbane Aberfeldy CC. He writes, "Long ere the cart has zig zagged its way up the hill to Birnam Pond, through the deep-frozen ruts, the rinks have been mapped out."

The reference to 'Birnam Pond' had me puzzled for a while. Birnam is a long way from Aberfeldy, and I wondered at first if a pond in the Birnam/Dunkeld area had been a neutral venue for another District Medal Match. However, that did not seem plausible, given that Rockwood's text made clear that the two groups of curlers met after their game for 'beef and greens' in an Aberfeldy hotel.

The answer became apparent on studying locations where curling had been played in the Aberfeldy area, on the Historical Curling Places website. This showed me that Loch-na-Craig, a lochan some three miles to the south-east of Aberfeldy, had been used in previous years as a venue for matches between Weem and Aberfeldy, see here. Today the loch can be found just off the A826, which is the road you would take from Aberfeldy if you were heading towards Birnam. Hence, perhaps, 'Birnam Pond'!

And getting to that pond would involve an uphill climb. I am now convinced that this is the venue illustrated in the lower of the two views in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News montage. The top pond, which shows one surrounded by trees, could well be the Aberfeldy CC's pond at Pitillie (or Pittiely), see here, opened in 1885.   

J G Temple enjoyed drawing animals, it would seem!

The last horse related story is a sad one, from reports of the Scotland v England international in 1895 on Talkin Tarn, near Brampton. David Smith wrote in 2011 about this match here. The British Newspaper Archive can now provide contemporary reports of the bonspiel. The Dundee Courier on January 30, with the headline 'The International Bonspiel: Great Victory for Scotland', does not record any problems, mentioning that 'the ice was splendid' and that 90 rinks had been laid out in three parallel rows. The paper recorded that Scotland had won by 1087 shots to to 842. The Glasgow Herald on the same day reported positively on the match, noting that special trains were run from Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Manchester and Yorkshire.

The Dundee Evening Telegraph, sister to the Dundee Courier, had time to include rather more detail in its report of the match. This report included the information, "The 'get ready' gun was fired at one o'clock, and a few minutes later the gun to commence play sounded, but some delay occurred owing to carting arrangements not being equal to the strain put upon them." The article continued, "Two hours and a half was the time appointed for play, but owing to the late arrival of the stones, some rinks only played one hour and a half."

So what had been the problems with the 'carting arrangements'?

The Leeds Mercury of January 30 explained that the match had originally been scheduled for the previous Thursday, but did not go ahead that day because of a thaw. The paper suggests that some local farmers had been available to help transport stones on that first occasion, but, because of their disappointment then, had chosen not to turn out on January 29, the day that the match did go ahead.

The Leeds Mercury report sought blame elsewhere and was critical of the railway company, saying, "The North-Eastern Railway Company, it was said, had undertaken to do all the necessary carting, but if they did, they are not to be congratulated on the perfection of their arrangements." The paper notes that only eight carts were available, and that one of these was rendered useless 'as the horse when breasting a particularly steep bit of hill dropped down dead. The players had to get their stones to the tarn as well as they were able, with the consequence that the late arrivals were not able to begin their games at the appointed time'.

The newspaper also suggested that, because most Scots teams had reached the Tarn first, they had had time for practice, implying that this had contributed to the English defeat.

In contrast, the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer report of the match was much more measured, saying, "The Tarn is about a mile from Brampton Station, and the curling stones had to be carted from the station to the Tarn. This led to some delay, and many of the rinks were later than others in starting, some being about three quarters of an hour behind. There had been a heavy fall of snow in the night, and the road from the station to the Tarn was very difficult to traverse - so bad was traffic that the stationmaster lost, from heart disease, a valuable horse which was conveying the stones to the Tarn over the slippery and arduous road." The Shields Daily Gazette printed an identical report.

So, a valuable horse, belonging to the station master at Brampton, died in the service of curlers on January 29, 1895. I wonder if it had a name. For anyone interested in the history of draft horses in the ninetenth century, here is where to start!

Images are© British Library Board, or © Illustrated London News Group, courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive.

In the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh can be found an interesting painting. It forms a backdrop to a display of sporting items, including a pair of curling stones, a broom and a spectacular medal. It is described as a 'Watercolour of winter sports on a frozen Duddingston Loch', and was painted by Charles Altamont Doyle. The museum reference dates it to 1876.

There's just so much going on in the painting. But in the midst of all the skaters and spectators, there's a curling match in progress!

You may never have heard about Charles Doyle, but you will know of his son, Arthur Conan Doyle, much loved author of the Sherlock Holmes stories.

And regular visitors to this website will have seen another of Charles Doyle's paintings. The sidebar has an image of David B Smith's book, Curling: an illustrated history. David provided a Doyle painting, which he owned, to be used on the cover of his book.

Here's that image in detail. To be honest, I was never a great fan of Doyle's paintings, although in putting this blog post together, and learning about the artist, I've come to appreciate them a bit more. I can certainly appreciate the humour therein. Look to the top left where Doyle has included the legs of someone who has been upended on the ice! And one has to smile at Doyle's depiction of the four curlers!

I discovered recently that the image on the book's dust jacket is just part of a larger painting, above, which has additional detail on both sides. According to the information on the dust jacket the painting is dated 1862.

Charles Altamont Doyle was born in 1832, the youngest son of John Doyle, a well known cartoonist of the time. At the age of seventeen he obtained a job in Edinburgh as an assistant surveyor in the Scottish Office of Works. According to Simon Cooke (see here) he held a variety of related jobs there and supplemented his income with his art and illustrations.

He married Mary Foley in 1855, and they raised seven children, the eldest of whom was Arthur Conan Doyle.

Drink seems to have been Doyle's downfall. His health suffered in consequence, and in 1876 he lost his job at the Scottish Office of Works. He was committed to the mental institution in Montrose in 1881, and he died in 1893, aged 61, in the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, having spent the final years of his life there. Simon Cooke suggests that he may have been committed to the Crichton as a way of treating his alcoholism rather than because of a specific mental illness.

An extensive biography of Charles Altamont Doyle can be found here, on a website that contains many resources for anyone interested in this 'fantasy artist'.

There's a self portrait sketch of the artist, from 1848, here.

I know of two other curling paintings by Charles Altamont Doyle. Both now belong to the City Art Centre, Edinburgh. This one is currently on display in the 'Paper Trail' exhibition at the City Art Centre, see here.

Here's a close up of this painting. Significant is that the players are shown using broom 'kowes', and that a circle has been scratched on the ice.
This painting, on loan from the City Art Centre, is currently on display in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh as part of the 'Playing for Scotland: The Making of Modern Sport' exhibit. Given the other wonderful sporting paintings on show in the gallery, the small Doyle painting may not at first be obvious, as it is within a cabinet, behind glass. I was on my hands and knees to study it! It is described as 'Curling Match on Duddingston Loch', although the date that it was painted seems not to be known.

I've mentioned before, see here, that this image was used on a Christmas card produced by the National Trust for Scotland some years ago. However, if you compare the image above with that on the card, you will find that the card image has been reversed!

Charles Doyle liked to paint fairies, and, indeed, one can find this theme in other curling sketches. In a post on the first year of this Curling History blog back in 2008, David wrote about 'Curling Spirits', see here, and included two of these sketches.

David also credited a sketch of curlers falling through the ice to Charles Doyle, see here. I do not know the provenance of this last work. However, its existence makes me wonder if indeed there are other curling sketches by Charles Altamont Doyle awaiting discovery!

Photographs of the Doyle paintings in situ are by Bob, on various visits to Edinburgh in the past months. Apologies for the reflections on some of these. The dust jacket image from David's book has been scanned. The larger version of this image can be found in The Roaring Game: Memories of Scottish Curling, written by David in 1985, and also scanned.

Construction of the St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, began in 1137. The photo above is by Chris Downer and was taken in 2011. The history of the cathedral can be found here. The link to the sport of curling is that, in 1638, the Bishop of Orkney was accused of being a curler on the Sabbath! Here's the story.

Firstly, I should say that there are not many references to the sport of curling in the seventeenth century. I've previously written about the earliest references to curling and curling stones which appear in The Muses Threnodie, see here. The Bishop of Orkney connection is just the second time that we can find a definitive reference to the sport in the seventeenth century.

The source is private papers of Robert Baillie (here), a minister in Kilwinning who attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, held in Glasgow in 1638. In a letter to William Spang, a Presbyterian minister in the Netherlands whom he addresses as 'Cousin', he details through 58 pages the 'History of the General Assembly in Glasgow in 1638'. He writes, "On Tuesday the 11th December was our eighteenth session. Orkney's process came first before us. He was a curler on the ice on the Sabbath day; a setter of tacks to his sons and good sons, to the prejudice of the church; he oversaw adultery, slighted charming, neglected preaching, and doing any good there; held portions of ministers stipends for building his cathedral." ('Tacks' are 'leases', and this accusation implies that he was corruptly favouring his family.)

So, what was happening in Scotland in 1638? I have a basic grounding in Scottish history, but I am no historian. However, here is my simplistic view of what was going on at this time. In 1603, James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne, the Union of the Crowns, see here. James died in 1625 and was succeeded by Charles I. Charles's attempt to make the Church of Scotland more like the Church of England was met with resistance. For example, when the dean of St Giles Cathedral attempted in 1637 to read from the new Book of Common Prayer for the first time, a woman called Jenny Geddes threw the stool she was sitting on at him and a riot broke out. The protests eventually led to the signing of the National Covenant. In 1638, the first free General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for 36 years was held in Glasgow. The Assembly ignored the attempts of the King’s commissioner to dissolve it. It found the Book of Common Prayer to be unlawful.

The details of the Assembly, the events leading up to it, and what happened thereafter, are all documented in detail by David Stevenson in his book The Scottish Revolution 1637-1644: The Triumph of the Covenanters, published in 1973. Between December 7 and December 13, 1638, all fourteen of Scotland's archbishops and bishops were deposed. Eight were excommunicated, the rest suspended from acting as ministers 'until they submitted to the Assembly and repented', according to Stevenson. The Bishop of Orkney was one of those suspended.

Who was he? And had he really played curling on a Sunday? His name was George Graeme, and we know a lot about him thanks to the family research done by Louisa Graeme and published in 1903 in Or and Sable: a book of the Graemes and Grahams. Louisa devotes a whole chapter on George Graeme who became the Bishop of Orkney, our 'Sunday curler'. He was born around 1565, the younger son of the Laird of Inchbrackie. George attended St Andrews University, and Louisa suggests, "We may be sure the scholar played too; frequent games of golf must have been won and lost on the breezy dunes of St Andrews." So, did his love of sport continue?

By 1590, George was a minister in the Parish of Clunie. He married in 1592, having fallen in love with Marion Crichtoun (Crichton). But her mother and step-father apparently disapproved of the match. George's wife-to-be had to be 'rescued' by George's brother and friends who turned up at Ardoch House on the night of June 29, 1592, with forty fully armed horsemen, and forced their way inside. Marion was spirited off. It is the stuff of a romantic novel! George himself wasn't present on the raid. As a minister, it would not really have been appropriate to his position to have taken part in such an adventure! But he did marry Marion.

In 1595, the Reverend George Graeme was minister at Auchtergarven, then in 1599, he became minister at Scone. He was appointed to the Bishopric of Dunblane in 1606, then in 1615 he moved with his wife and now large family to Kirkwall in the Orkney Isles, on being appointed Bishop of Orkney.

In 1617, he made a return visit to Scone, staying temporarily with Sir David Murray, formerly the King's cupbearer. His wife Marion had not come south with him on this occasion, and his biographer, Louisa Graeme writes, "She was somewhat needed by her lord and it might have been better for him had her gentle counsels been at hand to prevail; for then we think that the public records would have been free of the Bishop's name, but they bear testimony that the jovial nature of the long months of exile and official cares is lured away by the pleasure of mingling with old friends, and he is cited for curling on the ice on Sunday, a grave offence in any minor person, but amounting almost to be a crime in one of his rank and age, and so the record of the offence is left."

So, George Graeme, in his early 50s, had been seen curling somewhere around Scone in 1617. This is significant, as we know from the references in The Muses Threnodie (see here) that it was in the neighbourhood of the nearby town of Perth that curling was taking place in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. It all makes sense, and disproves any suggestion that the Bishop had been curling in the Orkney Isles.

George Graeme's love of curling, which apparently led to him being seen to play on a Sunday in 1617, would come back to haunt him twenty years later!

What were the 'public records' to which Louisa Graeme refers, that were kept of the Bishop's Sunday curling? Whatever these were are no longer known about, and Robert Baillie's mention of the curling in 1638 is the only record that remains.

Louisa documents in some detail the Bishop's life with his own children and extended family. She mentions various activities which took him around the country.

More details of George Graeme's time as the Bishop of Orkney can be found in History of the Church in Orkney, 1558-1662 by the Rev J B Craven, published in 1897. Chapters 15-23 are all about George Graeme. As well as church duties, he held courts and enforced order. There is nothing therein, that I can see, to suggest that the Bishop did not carry out his duties appropriately and diligently. Craven does describe him as 'a shrewd man of business', buying up land and erecting manor houses thereon.

George's wife Marion died in 1633, and at that time he would have been aware that his own future, and that of his position as Bishop, was somewhat uncertain.

This is Glasgow Cathedral, where the 1638 General Assembly was held. By then in his seventies, George Graeme did not travel to Glasgow for the General Assembly, his son Patrick appearing for him. His 'trial' saw him accused, not just of curling on the ice on the Sabbath, but also of neglecting his preaching, and other charges as Robert Baillie notes. By submitting, essentially by pleading guilty, the charges brought against the Bishop were never openly challenged. It is interesting that one of his accusers was David Watsone who had been earlier the Bishop's servitor, and through the Bishop's patronage had been elevated to be vicar at St Olaf's kirk. As J B Craven puts it, Watsone "showed a poor return in gratitude for the kindness shown him by his patron."

Compared with other bishops who were excommunicated, George was leniently treated. Had he been excommunicated he would have lost all civil rights and his personal estate. As it was, George lost his ecclesiastical status and what remained of his life would be in much altered circumstances. He probably died in 1647, perhaps in Edinburgh, although the location of his grave seems not to be known.

From a curling history perspective, that the accusation that the Bishop had been 'curling on the ice' was made openly at the Glasgow Assembly suggests that the sport was by no means unknown in Scotland in 1638, and that it was a recreation, and as such, should not have been indulged in on a Sunday. Robert Baillie lists the curling first of all the accusations brought against the Bishop, and I found that significant. However, Baillie's words remain the only contemporary mention of the Bishop's misdemeanour and, as I've mentioned above, it would be interesting to know where Louisa obtained the 1617 information in her research.

After the Glasgow Assembly, the reaction in Scotland against King Charles's attempts to reform the Scottish Church was to lead to armed conflict, the so-called 'Bishops' Wars' of 1639 and 1640, see here. 

Postcript: Louisa's suggestion is that the curling that the Bishop of Orkney was accused of took place near Scone, in Perthshire, and not in Orkney. In any case, I have found no evidence that curling was ever practised anywhere on the Orkney Isles, although there is a suggestion that material for curling stones was at one time collected from Copinsha, a small island to the east of the Orkney mainland. This, to me, seems somewhat far-fetched, but remains to be further investigated. It was well into the nineteenth century when, further north in the Shetland Isles, the Ultima Thule curling club was established in 1875. Photographic evidence of play near Lerwick in the 1880s can be found in the Shetland Museum and Archives, for example here.

The photo of St Magnus Cathedral is © Copyright Chris Downer and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence. The image of Glasgow Cathedral is from an old postcard c1900. 'Robert Baillie's Letters and Journal', printed for William Creech and William Gray, 1775, was consulted in the Special Collections, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. David Stevenson's book 'The Scottish Revolution 1637-1644: The Triumph of the Covenanters', published in 1973 by David and Charles, Newton Abbot, was also read in the National Library of Scotland. 'Or and Sable: a book of the Graemes and Grahams' by Louisa G Graeme was published by William Brown, Edinburgh, and is available in the National Library of Scotland. It has been privately digitised and the chapter about George Graeme can be found online here. 'History of the Church in Orkney, 1558-1662, Bishops Bothwell, Law and Graeme' is the third volume of Orcadian Church History by the Rev J B Craven, and published in 1897 by William Peace and Son, Kirkwall. This book is also held by the National Library in Edinburgh. My thanks to the always helpful staff at the library.

Here's another favourite. The design is by Aileen Paterson (see here) for McLaggan Smith Mugs Ltd, who are still in business in Jamestown, Alexandria, Scotland, see here. I believe this to be quite old - from the 1980s - but do not know exactly when it was produced.

This mug was commissioned to be sold as a fund raiser for the Ladies Branch of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club.

Here's an example of an 'event mug', to be sold as a souvenir at a curling championship, in this case the World Women's Championship in Lake Forest, Chicago, in 1987. I can see that gathering together a collection of 'curling event mugs' would make an interesting challenge. Here are a few more:

This pair of mugs are from the World Juniors in Glasgow in 1991.

When you bought a coffee at the Le Gruyere European Championships in Fussen, Germany, in 2007, it was served in a real mug like this one, which you got to keep!

From the Ford World Curling Championship in Braehead in 2000. This is one side of the mug ...

... and this is the other, showing one of the late Rod McLeod's cartoon images.
A rarity this one. From the European Mixed Seniors event at Greenacres in 2010.

Advertising on one side, the event logo on the other. From the World Juniors at Perth, Scotland, in 2011.

Not obviously connected with curling, but Harvies, aka the Auchenharvie Ice Rink in Stevenston, North Ayrshire, has been home to curling on certain days each week since 1990. I don't have any mugs identifying specific curling clubs in my collection, but I'm sure there must be some out there!

When does a coffee mug become a tankard? Souvenir mugs from the Welsh Bonspiel, 1981.

And here's another that could also serve as a small tankard. This from the Keele Street Pottery Co Ltd, England, see here.  The company closed in the late 1950s, so the mug must date from before then. Hand painted.

Not included here are china teacups and glass tankards - these for another time.

If you know of other old curling mugs, not illustrated above, do please send photos and these can be added below. Email address can be found in the sidebar.

Many of the mugs illustrated above are in the care of Christine and Hugh Stewart. Thanks to Hugh for photographing these. Other pics are by Bob. 

Added 8/3/17

Jim Brown has been in touch via Facebook with a photo of two more. On the left is a North Highland Curling Trust mug made by Tain Pottery. The one on the right is from the Newtonmore Curling Club's centenary bonspiel at Aviemore in 1992. Thanks Jim.

Fiona Simpson offers up this one, but says, " ... not sure where it came from!" Thanks Fiona.

Alice Mansell sends this one, with a cartoon image. A bear is throwing the stone and the caption reads, "The loggers were a little short of spares this year!" Love it! Thanks Alice.