FOLLOWING an object of the week piece, which featured in the Peeblesshire News earlier this year, Roger Scott from Peebles Curling Club got in touch to provide us with further background to the item.

In 1823, a Great Bonspiel (Curling Tournament) was played at the Whim and on Penicuik loch between Tweeddale and Midlothian.

Peebles Curling Club minutes state “probably the largest meeting of its kind had taken pace - attended by many gentlemen and others of the two counties and the city of Edinburgh, anxiously awaiting the fate of the game.”

Fifteen rinks from each county and the city of Edinburgh took part. These were incredible games - you won when you reached 31 shots and there were 14 players in each rink! Tweeddale curlers won the Bonspiel by 61 shots.

At a dinner held in Peebles in 1824, the following song composed by the Revd Hamilton Paul (founding member of Broughton Curling Club) was sung: 

“The curlers have met on the loch braw and deep,
The braw and deep loch of the Whim,
And when the ice on its surface cannot keep, 
It behoves you to sink or to swim,
The rinks are all measured,
The hog scores all drawn,
And the rings that encircle the tee,
Wi’ his state at his fit,
An his broom in his haul,
Every curler’s accounted you see,
The combat begins and ‘Midlothian’! they cry,
But who shall the victory claim,
Any mortal to calculate I will defy,
For the ice is a slippery game,
The Lords of the city,
Showed they had a mind,
To bear every triumph away,
But Peebles left all competition behind,
And the Tweeddale boys carried the day.”

At the dinner, a commemorative medal was presented to Peebles Curling Club and it is in use today for its Points competition.

In John Kerr’s History of Curling, it is recorded that Dr Renton of Penicuik: “had the burden of carrying out arrangements for the Bonspiel and he found great difficulty owing to the differences he found between the clubs over the rules of the game from number and size of stones, the length of the game and even the number in a rink.”

In 1824, Dr Renton wrote to the Secretaries of the various clubs urging them to form a National Curling Association.

From this event in 1823 came The Grand Caledonian Curling Club, which became the The Royal Caledonian Curling Club in 1843.

Many thanks to Roger who supplied us with this article which previously featured in the Peeblesshire News on February 6, 2009

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