Perhaps inspired by the Royal family’s love of Ice Skating, many towns across the UK in Victorian Times had their own club for the new winter leisure past-time of ‘skating’.
Blantyre was no exception, with an Ice Skating club already formed by February 1865.
Newspaper reports made announcements when and if the ice was suitable for skating, and when it was in thaws to avoid. The venue for the club in Winter 1864/1865 was the River Clyde, which looking back on this now seems ludicrously dangerous!
In later times, some fields were deliberately flooded to create shallow, safer ice skating rinks, including used often for curling. One such example being pictured in this incredible, rare photo of the 1890’s at Auchinraith, with the flooding of the Parkburn. This may have been the long cold Winter of 1894/1895, when so many people took to curling for the first time.
