Curling in the Footsteps of History: Appendix

CHRONOLOGICAL TOUR ITINERARY

January
Friday 9 R.M.S Empress of Ireland departs Halifax en route to Liverpool.
Saturday 16 Arrival at Liverpool Docks on Empress of Ireland; train journey north to Edinburgh and informal match versus Watsonian CC at Myreside
Sunday 17 Church service at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh
Monday 18 Peebles; dinner at the Peebles Hydro Hotel courtesy of Peeblesshire Province.
Tuesday 19 Abbotsford House and Melrose by car. Masonic Dinner at Lodge Canongate, Kilwinning
Wednesday 20 Free day and National Reception Function in the Music Hall, Edinburgh
Thursday 21 Luncheon in the City Chambers, Edinburgh hosted by the Lord Provost. Evening train to Glasgow and welcome reception.
Friday 22 Practice day against local curlers in the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Dinner as guests of the Scottish Ice Rink Club at the St Enoch Hotel, Glasgow.
Saturday 23 Practice day against local curlers in the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Sunday 24 Church service at Glasgow Cathedral.
Monday 25 Special Match against the 1903 Scottish touring team at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof, followed by dinner in the Windsor Hotel, Glasgow.
Tuesday 26 Match versus Midlothian Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Dinner in Ferguson and Forrester's Restaurant, Glasgow.
Wednesday 27 Match versus Glasgow Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Dinner in Ferguson and Forrester's Restaurant, Glasgow.
Thursday 28 First Test Match at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Friday 29 Match versus West Lothian Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Dinner in Bathgate.
Saturday 30 Match versus East Lothian Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Dinner at which Rev J Kerr gave the principal address.
Sunday 31 Church Service.

February
Monday 1 Second Test Match at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Tuesday 2 Matches versus Stirlingshire and Forth and Endrick Provinces at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Wednesday 3 Match versus Upper Strathearn at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Match versus Scottish Central Provinces called off due to thaw.
Thursday 4 Match versus Strathmore Province and Dundee and Perth Province called off due to thaw. Tour in motor cars to Murthly Castle by way of the giant beech hedge, to Birnam, to Dunkeld and finally Blairgowrie.
Friday 5 Perthshire Curling Association
Saturday 6 Scotland v Wales football match.
Sunday 7 Church Service in St Cuthbert's Church, Edinburgh.
Monday 8 Third Test Match at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Tuesday 9 Matches versus Biggar and Peebles Provinces at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Dinner in the Grand Hotel and a show at the Empire Theatre.
Wednesday 10 Match versus Lanarkshire Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Thursday 11 Match versus Loch Leven Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Grand Reception and Court chaired by Sir Basil T Montgomerie, Bart.
Friday 12 Outdoor Match versus Inverness Province at Moy. Dinner hosted by Inverness Province.
Saturday 13 Outdoor Match versus the North-East of Scotland Provincial
Curling Association, West Cults, Aberdeen. Dinner in the Palace Hotel, Aberdeen.
Sunday 14 Various church services attended informally in Aberdeen. Rest day.
Monday 15 Visit to Balmoral and outdoor match on the rink in the grounds
Telegrams exchanged with King Edward VII in London.
Tuesday 16 Matches versus Galloway Province. Luncheon in the City Chambers, Glasgow, hosted by the Corporation of Glasgow, Lord Provost McInnes Shaw in the chair. His Grace, the Duke of Argyll, former Governor General of Canada entertained to dinner by the tourists at the North British Hotel, Glasgow.
Wednesday 17 Visit to Burns Country and tour in thirteen motor cars especially provided for the occasion. Luncheon in the Tea Gardens. Afternoon visit to Culzean Castle and dinner in the Council Hall, Ayr as guests of the Corporation. Smoking concert in the Town Hall.
Thursday 18 Matches v English and Dumfries Provinces at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Friday 19 Matches v Twelfth Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Canadian Team Presentation Night at the North British Hotel, Glasgow.
Saturday 20 Match v Borders Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Sunday 21 Church Service at Glasgow.
Monday 22 Match v Ayr District at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Tuesday 23 Matches versus Tenth Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof.
Wednesday 24 Matches versus Scottish Central Province at the Scottish Ice Rink, Crossmyloof. Depart Scotland.
Thursay 25 Sail for Canada on R.M.S Empress of Ireland.

Curling in the Footsteps of History: The Empress of Ireland

by Robin Copland

When the tourists travelled to Scotland, they did so on the Empress of Ireland, a new trans-Atlantic steamer built in Fairfield’s yard on the River Clyde in 1906 and launched in Govan, Glasgow, on Saturday 27th January that year.

The Empress of Ireland was a large and well-appointed ship of some 14000 tons, 550 feet long and with a breadth of 66 feet. It is not recorded in which class the Canadian curlers travelled, but suffice to say that, as was common at the time, she offered first, second and third class accommodation, the latter situated deep in the bowels of the ship.

A mere five years after her voyage carrying the Canadian curlers to their great Scottish adventure, the same Empress of Ireland had departed Quebec and was on her way down the St Lawrence river towards the open sea and her ultimate destination, Liverpool. The weather was alternatively fair and foggy. It was 2.00am in the morning of 29th May 1914. She had just dropped off the pilot at Farther Point, and was still close to the shore line. Her Master, Captain Henry Kendall spied a collier, the Storstad, laden to her Plimsoll line with coal on an inbound path up the river towards Montreal and also sailing close to the shore.

In Captain Kendall’s judgement, the collier was some eight miles distant, so he ordered his ship to starboard and to the centre of the river. Immediately after making the move, both ships were swallowed by an incoming fog bank – this, mind you, in pre-radar days and in confined waters. Captain Kendall fretted about the lack of visibility so decided to put his engines astern to take the way off his ship, this action taken in accordance with the Rules of the Road at Sea when maneouvering in the company of other ships. When he ordered the engines astern, he sounded three blasts on the ship's siren. (1 blast indicates a ship is turning to starboard; 2 blasts indicate a ship is turning to port, and 3 blasts indicate a ship is going astern).

The Empress slowed almost to a complete stop, but still had some forward way on. Suddenly, out of the murk, two masthead lights appeared to starboard. Storstad was heading straight for the Empress. Captain Kendall quickly ordered a sharp alteration of course to starboard, but alas it was too late to save his ship.

The sharp bows of the Norwegian ship sliced into the Empress amidships between her two funnels. The fully loaded Storstad punched into the Empress below her waterline, entering her for about 25 feet, and opening up a gaping hole some 14 feet wide. Water rushed into the starboard side, and Empress of Ireland quickly took on a list to starboard. Open port holes which should have been closed at sea, allowed the ingress of even more water. The damage precluded the closing of water tight doors, compounding the problems the ship faced. Within 10 minutes the liner lay on her side, some passengers who had managed to escape perched on her hull. One passenger commented, “It was like sitting on the beach, and watching the tide come in.”

There was only time to lower four of the lifeboats. Many of the passengers were trapped below in the lower decks, unable to escape in time.

Within 14 minutes the Empress was gone and she lies to this day 150 feet below the surface on the muddy bottom of the Saint Lawrence River. 1,012 souls perished that night. Strangely, for in those days, the Captain traditionally went down with his ship, Captain Kendall was one of the survivors and, on being hauled aboard the Storstad, was heard to mutter in a masterpiece of understatement, “You have sunk my ship.”

He was exonerated of all blame and later survived a torpedoing in the Great War.

The Prince of Wales's Stones

When David McFarlane, president of Scottish Central Province of the RCCC, asked me during the recent Ramada Perth Masters whether Central Province was the oldest I had to confess that I had not the slightest idea. Moreover, I said, since provinces were permissive when they began and did not form part of the organisation of the Royal Club, that is, groups of clubs could form one if they wished, and organise themselves, there was very little in the Annuals about the early history of provinces.

Anyway, the query set me off on a search through many an early Annual, and I found a number of items of interest which had escaped me in the past.

We all know that the first royal connection with the RCCC occurred when Prince Albert agreed in 1842 to be the club’s patron; and that permission to change the name from Grand to Royal followed the next year.

The agreement of Prince Albert was marked by the presentation to him of a silver-handled pair of curling stones. My rediscovery of the stones after a long search and a description of them are to be found in my article in the Scottish Curler of October 2003.

On the death of the first patron the club solicited the patronage of his son, Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, and this was readily granted. This honour to the Club was also marked by the presentation of a pair of curling stones.

The Scotsman of 7 February 1863 reported the stones thus:
“…At the same meeting [last AGM] it was resolved to present His Royal Highness with a pair of curling stones, and it was remitted to the Secretary, Mr Cassels, to take steps accordingly. The stones will be forwarded in a few days, and are at present lying at the shop of Messrs Mackay, Cunningham, & Co., goldsmiths to the Queen, Princes’ Street. They are made of green serpentine, found near Crieff, Perthshire, and generally known to curlers by the name of Muthill stone. The handles, the wood of which is of oak from Linlithgow Palace, are richly mounted in silver. The plates which screw on to the stones are elaborately chased with thistles, forming shields in the centres which bear the following inscription:-“Presented by the Royal Caledonian Curling Club to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, Patron, 1863”. The handles are wreathed with thistles, engraved, and the mountings on each end of the wooden part have a wreath of oak-leaves and acorns executed in the same style. They have been beautifully designed and executed by Mackay, Cunningham, &Co.”

When I was looking for the 1842 stones, which many royal functionaries were unable to find in any of Her Majesty’s palaces, castles and houses, I was eventually told that a pair of presentation stones had been traced at Sandringham, the Queen’s English summer residence. When I sought to have them photographed I was told that they had been transferred to Balmoral, and when I was next passing the Queen’s summer residence in Scotland I found the 1863 stones in the factor’s office, where they were in use as a pair of bookends supporting some large volumes sitting on a window sill. I was disappointed that I had not found the stones of 1842 but I was pleased to see a pair of considerable grandeur.

So significant were the stones that an illustration of them appeared in the Illustrated London News of 8 April 1863. Her Majesty graciously allowed this pair to be borrowed and displayed at the exhibition, held in Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow, when the Silver Broom Men's World Curling Championship was being played in the Kelvin Hall, in 1985.

The discovery which prompted this article appears in an abstract of the RCCC Treasurer’s Account for 1862-3. It was the bill for the 1863 stones.

“…Paid for Curling Stones presented to the Patron ….£25 13 8”.

This was a very large sum to expend on curling stones.

Almost contemporary with this pair are the earliest surviving financial records of curling stone manufacture. Andrew Cowan made stones at Barbieston near Drongan in Ayrshire, and his account book survives for the period from 1865 until about 1889.

Stones were generally sold by him by the pair without handles. The price depended on the sort of stone and the degree of finish. About the cheapest price was twenty four shillings for a pair of Burnock Water. One can get some idea of what that price represents when one sees elsewhere in Cowan’s account book that he paid workers two shillings per day. The price of his cheapest stones, therefore, was the equivalent of the wages of a working man earned in two weeks of six days. Curling stones have always cost a fairly hefty price – but they did last for ever.

Below is an account from Cowan’s book for stones with handles sold not long after the making of the Prince of Wales’s stones.

Curling Stones Sold
1865 To
Nov. 28th. The Hurlford Curling Club
To 8 pair Marble Polished Curling Stones with handles fitted in
@ 33/- per pair ... £13/4/-

(For the benefit of those not familiar with pounds, shillings and pence, before decimalisation in 1971 there were twenty shillings per pound. The shilling was subdivided into twelve pennies. Thirty-three shillings (33/-) was one pound thirteen shillings.)

In 1876 a special pair of handles of silver and buffalo horn sold by Cowan cost One pound sixteen shillings.

From the above figures it will be very apparent that the stones presented to the Prince of Wales were very expensive indeed.

David B Smith.

Captions:
1. Photograph of the Prince of Wales’s stones.
2. Drawing of the stones from The Illustrated London News.

The Daily Graphic 1890

Despite numbers of curling clubs in England, particularly in the northern counties of that country, the popular press - or, in fact, the press in general - treated the game as a peculiarly Scots pastime and every time there was a considerable frost regaled the readers with anecdotes of the peculiar doings of their northern neighbours.

The Daily Graphic newspaper was founded in January 1890 as Britain’s first, illustrated daily paper. The illustrations were much sketchier than those in The Illustrated London News, The Graphic and some other weekly papers, because the artists had much more time to produce finished work for them.

In December 1890 there was a great frost. The Thames froze over from bank to bank at Twickenham for over a mile from Eel-pie Island to Crossdeep. The curlers of Crystal Palace Curling Club were able to play for the first time for several years. Back home in Scotland the Scots curled too, as was evidenced by the plethora of reports of matches for district medals, and local medals, and provincial medals, in the subsequent Annual of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club.

The new illustrated daily was not to be outdone. Page 7 of the edition of December 25 carried an argument FOR curling in England, and page 14 a small article and a sketch of 'The Roaring Game' at 'Dudingstone near Edinburgh.'

Here is the sketch:

The caption is: CURLING IN SCOTLAND: THE 'ROARING GAME' AT DUDINGSTONE, NEAR EDINBURGH.

The artist obviously knew the place. Not only are the Scots attired like Scots - one is wearing the kilt - but the octagonal curling house, built by the Duddingston Curling Society in 1826, is clearly recognisable. (A scheme for its refurbishment is underway at present.)

And here is the article:

“The frost had long held London in its grasp before being felt in Scotland, but now its spell has been cast over the whole of the north country. In anticipation of the icy touch, curlers and others had made due preparation, and they are enjoying their favourite sport. Several bonspiels of considerable importance have already been played with the enthusiasm which invariably animates the brethren of the broom. The game, which has been sung by the poets and painted by the artists of the land, has drawn all sorts and conditions of men around the sticks. In the excitement which prevails as well-aimed stones dash across the hog-score to the broughs or (culminating triumph!) to the tee, social, political, and other differences all disappear. A story is just told of a nobleman who after a poor attempt was greeted by his skip, the local blacksmith, with the curiously-mixed remark, 'That’s na shot ava ye idiot – my lord.' The utmost good fellowship, however, pervades the ranks of the curlers; and after a dinner of 'beef and greens', their traditional fare, they pledge each other heartily in the white wine of the country."

The other passage argued for the 'acclimatisation' of the game in England, just as had been achieved with golf by 1890.

“CURLING IN ENGLAND

If curling can flourish in Scotland in spite of the fact that sometimes winter passes winter without giving a single chance of playing a really great match, why should it not also flourish in England, where there is a greater chance of frost than in any part of Scotland? For, curious as it may appear, the mean temperature of December and January is lower in the English Midlands, and even in the country between the Thames and the English Channel than in any part of Scotland, except the coldest of the central counties or the tops of the Highland hills. This winter, indeed, the normal difference between England and Scotland has been greatly intensified. It may be that in spite of the continuous winter frost it is not possible to acclimatise the game in England, but, just as the game of golf has found a home in the south as well as in the north, so it ought to be quite possible to carry to the south the game which for generations has been the favourite one of the north when the days are at the shortest and the frost of the keenest.”

Can anyone suggest why, more than a hundred years later, the game has achieved scarcely a toe-hold in England?

David B Smith

What shape are your handles?

The open-ended handle is now so common that one sometimes wonders why there ever was a desire for a different design. But in some parts of Scotland and at some periods there was.

I suppose the earliest form of the closed handle was that of iron permanently fixed with lead into the top of the stone, but even in the earliest periods it appears that the L-shape was by far the most popular. In parts of Perthshire some, but by no means all, curlers liked a handle that was closed at each end and therefore attached to the stone in two places.

This very large triangular, or 'three neukit', stone from Coupar Angus weighs about 112 lbs.

It might appear that a closed handle would ease the carrying of a weighty stone but if the stone was balanced, as it needed to be for skilful play, neither form of the handle gave any advantage; and one finds examples of both types of handle on very heavy stones.

The heaviest stone of them all, The Jubilee Stane, has an L-shaped handle and tips the scales at about 117 lbs.


It was from original handles like these that the more sophisticated designs of the second half of the nineteenth century were developed.


This picture shows a very elegant, and expensive, handle for use with a single-soled stone. The basic handle is of cast brass but it has been very skilfully encased in thin silver plates which in turn bear engravings of thistles. It was located on two posts of iron permanently fixed into the top of the stone. At each side was a screw which when tightened made sure that handle and stone did not part company.

From the introduction of the double soled stone the basic form of the handle has consisted in a (roughly circular) plate into which the bolt is screwed. From this plate emerges in a curve the neck of the handle, often called the 'goose neck' because it resembles that part of that farmyard bird, and the grip is an extension of that, made of wood or ivory or bone or horn, embellished variously with rings of different metals and ivory and bone, and with plaques of silver, which could be engraved.

A small proportion of curlers liked closed handles even for their double-soled stones. The earliest example which I have come upon has been made from iron presumably by a local blacksmith, and it was connected to the stone by means of a central bolt.


Thereafter a number of variants upon this basic design found their way onto Scottish ice, but they were never common. One problem for the historian is that very few handle makers marked their products with a stamp or even initials, and so it is difficult to discover who made the handle, and when, and where.

This appears to be the simplest form, but the question arises – and perhaps some curler with engineering knowledge can answer it. "How is the wooden grip fixed to the brass of the handle?"

The question is still unanswered even with this sophisticated example.

This is the only handle stamped with the maker’s name and town; J SCOTT MELROSE.

The screw at the right hand side of this handle unscrews to allow the whole to come to pieces.

Curling spirits

This from David B Smith:

Charles Doyle, the father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was an accomplished artist, member of a family of accomplished artists. His father was a hard-headed political cartoonist, John Doyle, each of whose publications was eagerly awaited by queues of devotees in the street outside his London publisher’s.

Charles and his brother Dickie drew and painted in a wide variety of styles. For some reason both brothers developed a penchant for depicting fairies. Although Charles created quite a number of lively curling scenes he was not always successful in keeping fairies away from them. In John Kerr’s History of Curling there is an end piece by Charles which consists of a fey young lassie speeding over the ice, her diaphanous stole billowing behind her, apparently standing barefoot on the handle of a curling stone. She is said to be The Spirit of Curling.

The same young lady appears on a New Year card by him in water colour.

Against this background I thought it might be apposite to place a couple of mentions of actual fairy curling.

Robert Heron, in his Observations made in a Journey through the Western Counties of Scotland in the Autumn of MDCCXCII, which was published in Perth in 1793, writes of the beliefs of the people around Gatehouse of Fleet: “The Fairies are little beings of a doubtful character, sometimes benevolent, sometimes mischievous: On Hallowe’n and on some other evenings, they and the Gyar-Carlins are sure to be abroad, and to stap those they meet and are displeased with, Full of butter and bear awns; In winter nights they are heard curling on every sheet of ice…”

The next comes from the pen of James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd, friend of Scott and Christopher North, and very keen curler. I have mentioned it in a former Scottish Curler.

In 1807 he published The Mountain Bard, a small book of Borders stories and legends, turned into ballad form by himself, and accompanied by notes. From a note on the ballad, Willie Wilken, a famous warlock, comes the following:

Willie Wilkin’s funeral procession was interrupted by the arrival of two dreadful bulls, each of which “put each of them one of their horns into the (ropes) of the coffin, and run off with the corpse... and when after many miles, they came to Loch Ettrick, on the heights of Closeburn, the bulls were seen to plunge into the lake with the corpse.”

“He was, when alive, very fond of the game of curling on the ice, at which no mortal man could beat him; nor has his passion for it ceased with death; for he and his hellish confederates continue to amuse themselves with this game during the long winter nights, to the great terror and annoyance of the neighbourhood, not much regarding whether the loch be frozen or not. I have heard sundry of the neighbouring inhabitants declare, with the most serious countenances, that they have heard them talking, and the sound of the stones running alongst the ice and hitting each other, as distinctly as ever they did when present at a real and substantial curling.”

The spirit of curling had another and perhaps final outing in a poem composed by W A Creelman for his book, Curling Past and Present, published in 1950. The author was a member of Sydney Curling Club, Nova Scotia, a Canadian, who nonetheless wrote his wee poem in quite broad Scots.

The title of the poem is, curiously, The Spirit of Curling.

On the sheen o' THE GRIP a wee sprite frae the air
Rides awa down THE ICE wi' her hear a' aflame
In the path o' the wind gleams the goud o' her hair
Wha is she? Mon, Mon, she's the SOUL O' THE GAME.

She sway and she swings on her gossamer wings
Her twa een intent on the braw arms that SWEEP
Fore the front o' THE STANE as it enters THE RINGS
Thru' a narrow bit PORT like a ship frae the deep.

She kens ilka laddie o' CURLING maun learn
How to play on THE BROOM wi' the hand and the ee;
How to lay doun A GUARD wi an OOT - or IN TURN;
How to WICK and curl in on the face o' THE TEE.

In a rollicking vein the spunkie wein stands
On her curling ROCK speeding another to greet;
Tho the CHAPPIN' ha hurled her a doun on her hands,
In a twinking she's back on the tips of her feet.

Her youth is eternal, and auld is her fame;
She's lithesome, she's bonnie, she's canty, she's gleg,
She lo'es ilka move that belongs to the game,
From plain KNOCKIN OOT to CRACKING AN EGG.

So toast HER ye sons o' THE STANE and THE BROOM!
She a poem in motion as swaying and swirling
She rides on undaunted to victory or doom
THE VERRA SOUL O' THE GAME, THE SPIRIT O' CURLING.

The Glasgow Stones

This feature appeared in the October 2008 Scottish Curler magazine. David B Smith tells the story:

Late last year I got a phone call from a dealer in Perthshire about a pair of curling stones which were about to appear in the catalogue of a Perth saleroom. Nothing unusual about that, I hear you say. They were in their original box. Again, nothing very unusual about that. The box was lined throughout in crimson velvet; the circular holes into which the stones were placed were also lined in velvet. It was beginning to sound as if these were rather special stones. The handles were of a most unusual design and were cast from solid silver and the grips were made of horn. These were really special stones.

I had to wait until the description of the stones appeared in the sale-room catalogue. When I looked there was more. There was a plaque attached to the box, which bore this inscription:
‘OAK, Original Old Stockwell Bridge, Founded above the year 1335’ And the handles bore this inscription. ‘RESPECTFULLY PRESENTED To the Right Honourable Robert Stewart, LORD PROVOST OF THE CITY OF GLASGOW, This Pair of Curling Stones Chiseled out of the Boulders Found IN THE FORMATION OF Kelvin Grove Park By John Murray Contractor, 1853’

At this point I decided that a closer look was necessary and I applied to the auction house for photographs. The stones were indeed particularly splendid. The estimated price, however, was daunting: £800-£1000. I decided that the best course would be for me to be sure that the National Museums of Scotland and Glasgow Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery knew about them, for they were of museum quality.

In the meantime I sought out more information about Robert Stewart. It was clear from the inscription that he had been a Lord Provost of Glasgow. I discovered that he was born in 1810, had inherited and expanded the business of iron and coal master of Omoa in the parish of Cleland, and had joined the town council in 1842. He became Lord Provost in 1851 and became responsible for the purchase by the council in 1852 of the estate of Kelvin Grove, from the grounds of which the West End Park was created to provide recreational space for the citizens of the city which was rapidly expanding to the west away from the only other green space, The Green. The old bridge referred to in the plaque was demolished in 1851. He also led the successful campaign for the provision by the city of fresh water for the city from Loch Katrine in opposition to the plan of the Glasgow Water Company to supply it privately from Loch Lubnaig.

Robert Stewart is commemorated in the Kelvingrove Park by a vast ornate fountain (which, ironically, is not now permitted to run because it is fed by the public water supply). See here.

It appears that the curling stones were the result of the West End Park venture. Since it seems reasonable to suppose that the recipient of a gift of curling stones was himself a curler, further research in that area was necessary. The Annuals of the Royal Club provided only one Robert Stewart in the whole of Lanarkshire at the correct dates, and he was Robert Stewart, member and latterly secretary of Chryston Curling Club. The president of this club was Mark Sprot, advocate and ironmaster, and it may well be that their community of business caused them to be members of the same club.

The sale came and went. I saw on the internet that the stones had been sold for a hammer price of £3000! To this, of course, falls to be added buyer’s commission and VAT on the commission. I contacted the dealer who had first spoken to me about the stones. He was the under-bidder but did not know who had bought them. In vain I asked other dealers whom I knew.

On my way to Perth in February 2008 I looked in at an antique shop in Auchterarder. The owner said at once: “The stones you’re looking for are at Scone Palace today; there’s an antiques fair there.” And so, having looked in at Dewar’s Rinks I sped off to Scone and discovered the stones in their box at the stall of Nicholas Shaw, a dealer from Petworth, West Sussex. They were every bit as magnificent as their description had suggested them to be but by then even more expensive. Nick Shaw promised to send me good photographs and this he did, along with permission to use them for this article.

Whether I have found the correct Robert Stewart in Chryston CC or not, the recipient of these stones might as well have been a non-curler for all the play they have seen. The striking band, which is of a very unusual sort of stippled pattern, shows no sign of use whatever. The stones are in their pristine state.

The handles, made in Glasgow, are indeed cast from silver and hall-marked accordingly. They are of a unique design. The base of the goose neck is decorated with acanthus and vine leaf; and the entire edge is embellished.

This pair of stones is not only important from the point of view of design and execution but from their association with a very important citizen of Glasgow.

The photos are courtesy of Nicholas Shaw