History

History

About the ECA

The English Curling Association was formed in 1971. It is a full member of the World Curling Federation and is also a member of British Curling, the organisation which manages Great Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic curling programmes.

The English Curling Association aims to support, promote and develop the sport of curling in England, to unite curlers throughout England in the brotherhood of curling, to regulate the affairs of its members and to represent its members on International Confederations. It also sends teams to major international competitions.

The Executive Council of the ECA includes representatives from all areas of the country though curling can only currently be played at two locations in England: The Flower Bowl, Barton Grange Garden Centre, Brock, Preston, Lancashire (open all year) and one session per week at Cambridge Ice Arena (September to April).

History of English Curling

The sport of curling is more than 500 years old and its true origin is hidden in the mists of time, but it was in Scotland where it evolved over the centuries and also where the mother club of curling, The Royal Caledonian Curling Club was formed in 1838. In 1998 the sport became a full medal sport at the Olympics.

Early records indicate that curling was first played in the North of England at the end of the 18th century with a bonspiel being recorded as having taken place in 1795 between England and the Border Counties of Scotland. In 1811 a few Scots curled on the New River, a canal in North London, attracting such a large crowd that the ice was in danger of breaking and they were obliged to stop playing. A similar thing happened in 1847 when two Scottish Members of Parliament played on the Serpentine in London.

The first club was founded in Leeds in 1820, followed by Liverpool in 1839 and by 1914 there were 37 clubs playing in the North of England. England’s most important contribution to 19th-century curling was the invention of a means of making artificial ice. In 1877 a rink opened in Manchester and the world’s first curling match on artificial ice took place in March of that year. The rink soon closed but another was opened at Southport, Lancashire in 1879 and survived until 1890.

After the failure of Southport some curling was played at Prince’s Skating and Curling Club in London and then in 1910, the Manchester Ice Palace opened and curling was played there until 1962. Following the closure of Manchester, ice was found at Blackpool between 1965 and 1970, but there was then no regular curling in the North until the Flower Bowl Entertainment Centre opened in 2018. Here a 4 sheet dedicated curling rink can be found alongside ten pin bowling, crazy golf, golf simulators, cinemas, bars and restaurants. It is now the home of Preston Curling Club who for many years had travelled to Lockerbie in the South of Scotland to play.

Meanwhile, in the South, Richmond Ice Rink featured curling between 1951 and 1980. Since then a number of ice rinks in and around London were used for curling – Streatham, Peterborough, Chelmsford, Aldershot, and Alexandra Palace in North London. In 1997 curling stopped at Alexandra Palace and for many years there was nowhere in England to play regularly. However, in 2004, Ernest Fenton opened a dedicated 3 sheet curling rink in Kent, near Tunbridge Wells but unfortunately this was closed in 2022.

Some English curlers outside the London area travel to rinks just over the Scottish border, such as Kelso, or to Deeside in Wales, and many from all over the country travel to weekend competitions throughout Scotland and Europe. There are currently 6 curling clubs in the ECA (in order of founding – Preston, London, Glendale, SECC, St George’s and Cambridge while there are also wheelchair curlers who play with the English Wheelchair Curling Association.

Elsewhere in England, there is a distinct lack of places to play curling. To hire ice time at one of the 40+ ice rinks around the country depends on the rink management’s willingness to allocate ice time to an activity which will bring in less money than others. Generally, curlers cannot compete with the hundreds of leisure skaters for prime ice times and the management of the rinks are not interested in maintaining the level, smooth and consistent ice surface required for the sport of curling to succeed.

By comparison, there are around 30 ice rinks in Scotland where curling is played with approximately one-tenth of the population of England. With this imbalance in facilities compared to population, it is not surprising that Scotland is the dominant force in British Curling and has so far provided all the players for the Great Britain Olympic Teams! In 2012, however, a member of the ECA, Angharad Ward, was selected for the Great Britain Youth Olympic Games squad at the Games held in Innsbruck and in 2018 Anna and Ben Fowler were selected to participate in the British Olympic Programme for Mixed Doubles.

Teams have represented the Association in European Championships (men, women, junior men, junior women and mixed) and World Championships (men, women, junior men, junior women, senior men, senior women, mixed, mixed doubles and wheelchair). At the highest level, the best results have been bronze medals for the women in the 1976 European Championship, for the women in the 2003 World Senior Championship and for the mixed team in the 2009 European Mixed Championship. The best results for the men have been 4th in the 1990 European Championship and in the 2005 World Senior Championship while the Wheelchair team came 4th in the 2004 World Wheelchair Championship. In addition, the Junior women won gold in the European Junior Challenge in 2015 which qualified them for the World Junior Championship the same year.

In recent years, the addition of a B division in the European Championships has led to further medals, with the women winning the gold medal and promotion to the A Division in 2007 and the men doing likewise in 2018. Other medals have been: silver (and promotion) for the men in 2001 and the women in 2002 and bronze for the men in 2000, 2004, 2011 and 2014
and for the women in 2000, 2005, 2006 and 2013.