Some facts about old stones

This article was written by David Smith and was published in the March 2008 Scottish Curler.

The manufacture of curling stones on an industrial scale has never been common, perhaps because the product is so durable. Particularly when the game was almost solely played outdoors, stones hardly ever wore out - though some were broken in play - and were handed down from grandfather to son and grandson.

Noo, Dave, a preasant I’m to gie ye -
Tak’ may aul’ favourite stanes doon wi’ ye;
Tho’ chippit sair they aye rin soond;
An’ maybe as the years rin roond
They’ll lie as aften near the tee
Wi’ you, as they hae done wi’ me.

from An Auld Curler’s Advice to his Son, by W.S.F.

The years around 1900 seem to have been the high point in the proliferation of curling stone factories: there were seven then: Thomas Thorburn in Beith; T & A Kay in Haugh near Mauchline; Andrew Kay & Co. in Mauchline; John Keanie & Sons in Lochwinnoch; Donald & McPherson in Stair; David Beveridge in Perth; and J & W Muir in Beith. For ten or eleven years before 1892, Provost Gordon of Bathgate, himself a keen curler, was involved in making stones.

All of these firms, it appears, not only sold by retail, and repaired and repolished stones, but also sold by wholesale, for some of the big Glasgow and Edinburgh ironmongers and sports warehouses, like P & R Fleming & Co., Argyle Street, Glasgow, and R Anderson & Sons, Princes Street, Edinburgh, regularly advertised large stocks of curling stones ‘by the best makers’.

It is in the adverts that one comes across the great variety of stone types used in the manufacture. For instance, in 1882 Fleming advertised Burnocks, Tinkernhills, Ailsas - Grey and Red Hones, Carsphairn Red and Crawfordjohns; in 1890 Donald & McPherson added to these Silver Greys, Muthills, and Giells; and in 1892 Anderson advertised Grey Ailsa Craigs, Red Ailsa Hones, Grey Ailsa Hones, Crawfordjohns, Burnock Waters, Earnock Moor; to which in the same year Redpath, Brown & Co. added Blantyre Blacks, Blantyre Silver Greys, and Douglas Water.

Since almost nobody within living memory has bought for personal use a new pair of stones, most of these names mean little or nothing to the curling population. We all know - or do we? - what Common Ailsa looks like, and some of us know that the insert in an Ailsert stone is crafted from Blue/grey hone Ailsa, but how many would be able to tell a Crawfordjohn or a Burnock, far less a Tinkernhill or a Carsphairn Red? I personally couldn’t recognise a Blantyre, whether black or silver grey, and although I know where Muthill and Earnock are I have no idea what a stone bearing the name of these places looks like. As for Giells, is this a place or a person?

The main difference between stones of that distant period and the present is that they were made with two running surfaces: there was a more highly polished side for drug ice, and a less highly polished one for keen. The configuration of each sole was also different. The result was that the curler needed only a single pair of stones to answer to the many sorts of ice he encountered outdoors, whereas in former times it was necessary, if it could be afforded, for the keen curler to go to the ice with more than one pair of stones.

Top: Advert in the 1879-80 Royal Caledonian Curling Club Annual.

Most curlers will recognise Common Ailsa, also called these days Green Ailsa (there being nothing ‘common’ at all about curling stone metal!)

Blue Hone Ailsa. This is commonly used nowadays for the running band of new and reconditioned stones.

This is a closeup of Crawfordjohn which came from Craighead quarry near Abington.

This is Carsphairn Red.

This is Tinkernhill.

This beautiful pair are Burnock Water stones from around 1900.

The photographs are by David B Smith and Bob Cowan.

Please comment if you can contribute further information about the subject matter of this article.

The Seigniory Club

I added this post card to my collection recently. It's a real photograph, published by Photo Services Limited of Montreal, showing curling at the Seigniory Club, Quebec, Canada. It predates 1959 when the card was sent in the mail.

But look closely at the content. The ladies on the rink nearest the camera are playing with irons. By the look of these they are the smaller of the two sizes of irons played with in the middle of last century and, as I recall, weighed about the same as a curling stone. The men in the background are playing with stones.

Bonspiel (the History of curling in Canada, an on line resource from the Library and Archives Canada) says this about irons: "Quebec has had a long tradition of using iron curling stones as a substitute for granite. This came about because there were problems getting granite stones from Scotland. The iron stones were made at a forge in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. John Kerr, in his History of Curling, says that these stones were shaped like huge teakettles, weighed 46 to 65 pounds each and were owned by the clubs.

Quebec and the Ottawa Valley used iron stones in regular play up until about 1955, when they were replaced by granite stones, thus putting Quebec in step with other parts of Canada and the rest of the world. The use of iron rather than granite was a sore point and caused problems in organizing games and bonspiels (tournaments) for Quebec teams. The Ladies Curling Association of the Canadian Branch of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club held annual competitions for the Lady Tweedsmuir Trophy, and irons continued to be used in this competition up until and including 1953."

Did you notice the 'leaves' in the ice?

From the minute book of the Largs Thistle Club

Thanks to Sarah Goldie of the Largs Thistle Curling Club for contributing this extract from an old club minute book. She says, "I thought it too interesting to have hidden away."

From the Minute Book of the Largs Thistle Curling Club, March 15, 1886.

On the evening of March 15th and morning of the 16th A Grand Moonlight Bonspiel took place on the Hill Pond. The game was got up by a few of our younger and more active members, among whom were Messrs John Orr, John Hills, Malcolm Jnr, and Alex Houston, who began and carried out one of the most rare and successful curling bonspiels ever played on the Hill Pond. The game was announced to begin at half past eight o'clock, but before the players (some of whom came from Glasgow) were all up, and drawings and other arrangements made, it was some time after nine o'clock.

A fine moonlight night, with occasional clouds. A slight fall of snow for a time, after the game commenced. It kept on freezing during the entire game. The ice was pretty keen, and on the whole fairly good, only a little biased.

The game was one of 17 ends. After playing 8 or 9 ends we adjourned to the curling house to partake of a really sumptuous supper. Prepared by our worthy and able steward, George Tyre (Than whom I no of no one more able to cook or serve a supper). After doing full justice to the good things set before us, which consisted of several courses, we again repaired to the ice and finished our game. Shortly before one o'clock on the morning of Tuesday 16th March, 1886, thus finished one of the most ensociable and certainly the most memorable games at curling which we have on record all arriving home between one and two o'clock. Tired and in good humour.

I may mention here that there was a large turnout of spectators, between one and two hundred of both sexes, old and young.

Partly on account of the match being a Moonlight (and Lantern) one but chiefly on account of the advance of time of the Season, I have thought it right to take special notice of it in the Minute Book of the Club.

3 rinks, 24 players, 17 ends

No 1 Alexander Hill (16) played against No 2 George Barclay (12)
No 3 Alexander Houston (10) played against No 4 William Moodie (17)
No 5 John Morris (15) played against No 6 John Orr (13)

John Orr, Secy

About this blog

In one of the earliest poems about curling, by the Lanarkshire poet, James Graeme, and first published in 1773, we find:

The goals are marked out; the centre each
Of a large random circle; distance scores
Are drawn between, the dread of weakly arms.

In Thoughts on the Seasons, (1789), David Davidson the Kirkcudbrightshire poet wrote, when describing the play at a bonspiel between Glenbuck and Bentudor:

Then Fotheringhaw, a sidelin shot,
Close to the circle played.

And in the next year Alexander Wilson wrote:

To the ice of Loch Tankard, our buirdly braw callans
First bare the big whin-stane, and marked out the tee;
Syne drew down the dread hog-score, the hack and the circle,
Around which our Fathers oft sported wi’ glee.

The first badge or medal of the Duddingston Curling Society, which was struck in 1802 “to distinguish the members from any other gentleman” shows a circle inscribed in the ice of the loch.

The Rev. John Ramsay in his An Account of the Game of Curling, by a Member of the Duddingston Curling Society, 1811, page 4 states: "The place for the rink being chosen, a mark is made at each end, called a tee, toesee, or witter. It is a small hole made in the ice, round which two circles of different diameters are drawn, that the relative distances of the stones from the tee may be calculated at sight, as actual measurement is not permitted till the playing at each end be finished. These circles, in the technical language of the game, are called broughs."

Sir Alexander Boswell sang the following song to the Duddingston curlers at a dinner in McEwan’s Tavern on 11 December 1816:

"Soop the rink, lads, wide enough;
The hogscore mak’, and mak’ ilk brough;" (make every circle.)

The curlers of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries clearly played their stones into a circle round the tee.

It is therefore a bit surprising that in the Annual for 1838-9 in which the first rules of the Grand Caledonian Curling Club were published there was no explicit provision in the Rules of the Game for circles, or broughs, or a house.

Rule 16th stated: “No measuring of shots allowable previous to the termination of the end.”

When rules were first promulgated for district medals for points in the Annual for 1839-40 it was provided “3d, A circle eight feet in diameter shall be drawn round the tee…” and the circle was an important part of the scoring system, for one point, drawing, demanded that a stone be put into the circle and others demanded that a stone be struck out of it.

The 6th rule in the Annual for 1840-1 was: "...In cases in which each party has a stone equally near the tee, neither to be counted, and the winning party of the previous end is again to fill the ice. Measurements to be taken from the centre of the tee to that part of the stone which is nearest it."

In that for 1841-2 in Rule 6 we find this addition to the rule, printed in italics: “No stone to be counted which does not lie within seven feet from the tee, unless it be previously otherwise agreed upon.”

After the first thorough revision of the rules, which contained 'great improvements' according to the editor, we find in the Annual for 1854-5: “Rule 1….A circle of seven feet radius, to be described from each Tee as a centre, and no stone to count which is wholly without this circle…”

The revised Rules clarified when a stone was in or out of the circle. “10…No stone shall be considered within or without a circle unless it clear it; and every stone shall be held as resting on a line, which does not completely clear it; - in every case, this is to be determined by placing a square on the ice, at that part of the circle or line in dispute.” This was the first mention of a circle but it must have been part of the game from its beginning.

The new Rules were accompanied by a “Diagram or Plan” called “The Rink”, which set out a number of dimensions including those of smaller circles within the seven foot, of 2 and 4 feet in diameter, which were not obligatory.

The seven foot rule lasted until the AGM of 27 July 1938, when after much discussion involving the fact that in Canada they had been playing for years with a six foot circle in contravention of the Rules of the mother club, a compromise was reached. Rule 47 now read: “The Tees shall be 38 yards apart – and, with the Tees as centres, Circles having a radius of not less than 6 feet nor more than 7 feet shall be drawn. Additional inner Circles may be drawn.”

On 24 July 1963 the rule was changed to 6 feet, since all the other curling associations in the world, as well as all the Scottish ice rinks, used that measure.

The only change from that to the present is the decimalisation of the imperial measurements, which took place at the revision of 1980. The present rule is: “Section A.
3. The tees shall be 34.75m. (114 feet) apart and, with the tees as centres, circles having radii of 1.22m. (4 feet) and 1.83m. (6 feet) shall be drawn. Additional inner circles may also be drawn. ..”