6 January 2010: St Fort House, Fife

It was announced this week that the Royal Caledonian Curling Club are hoping to stage an outdoor ‘Grand Match’ for the first time in 30 years.

Curlers have begun to mark out rinks on the Lake of Menteith near Aberfoyle, which has not frozen sufficiently for curling since 2001. The Grand Match is a curling tournament held between clubs in the north and south of Scotland. The last such match also took place on the Lake of Menteith in 1979, with the one prior to that occurring in 1963.

This image, from RCAHMS large collection of archive photography, shows the Curling Club of St Fort House in 1895. St Fort house was designed by the renowned architect William Burn in 1829 and was built for Captain Robert Stewart, who had purchased the estate in 1795 from the Nairnes of Sandfurd. Burn designed a large baronial mansion with every modern convenience. The grounds featured estate buildings and services typical of the time, including greenhouses, stables, staff cottages, gardens – and the curling pond pictured here.

St Fort would go on to share the fate of many grand country houses during the 1950s and 1960s, and was demolished in 1953.