Dumfries Curling Club President's Medal

Maker’s mark: “DG”   The inscription reads, “President’s medal of the Dumfries Curling Club.  Instituted 4th February 1831.  Presented by Wm Thomson Esq. of Woodhouse, 14th January 1833."   During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries curling was Scotland’s national game.  It was organised on a parish basis because road travel was difficult at the best of times and particularly so during good curling weather. Matches were generally played with neighbouring parishes, although even this could involve the participants walking long distances in hazardous conditions.   By the early 1800s many of the parishes of Dumfries and Galloway had curling clubs, often with their own medals and trophies.  There appears to have been at least four curling clubs active in the town of Dumfries in the first part of the 1800s.  These were the Dumfries Curling Club, the Friars Vennel Curling Club, the Queensberry Street Curling Club and the curiously named Rowly Powly Curling Club.