The Lycett Trophy
Curling, as a sport in England, has a long and chequered history with many clubs across the country having outdoor ponds in the 19th and early 20th century where they played regularly.
If you want to know more about the history of curling in your area then a very good website is available English Curling Places
On that page you will find a map with pins marking all the places where we have, so far, discovered that curling has been played at one time or another. By clicking on a pin, you will get information, including maps and newspaper cuttings, which have been used as evidence in locating the various venues. Some are still in existence; others have long since been redeveloped.
As well as ponds, the map shows the location of ice rinks where curling has been played in the past and one of those was the Prince's Skating Club which opened in 1896 in Knightsbridge, London, as a private skating venue. First records of curling there can be found in 1902, when it became home to the London Caledonian Curling Club, which played on Thursday evenings. The last ice activities at the rink were in 1915.
In 1903, the 11th Duke of Bedford purchased the club and his wife, the 11th Duchess of Bedford, Mary Du Caurroy Tribe, was one of the great sporting characters of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. She was an accomplished angler and skater, was considered to be the top lady shooter of the day and was also a proficient pilot.
She was a patron of the London Caledonian Curling Club and in 1908 she presented a trophy, the Duchess of Bedford Shield, for an annual curling competition. In addition, another patron, Mr Forrest Lycett presented a trophy for the runners-up, in the form of a silver curling stone.
Here are a couple of pictures of winning teams with each of the trophies:
[Incidentally the Duke and Duchess were also patrons of Bedford Curling Club (not surprisingly) but also of Minnigaff Curling Club in Kirkcudbrightshire, which may seem unusual except that the Bedfords owned Cairnsmore House, near Minnigaff and indeed their son, the 12th Duke was born there.]
With the demise of curling as an activity at the Prince’s Club in 1915, it seems that the competition had a short history and the location of the 2 Trophies since then has been a mystery.
Let’s go forward 107 years. In June 2022 I received an email from a lady living in Great Malvern in Worcestershire. She had been in touch with Bob Cowan, the writer of the Curling History blog and he had suggested she contact me.
She had been clearing out her mother’s home and had come across some old curling trophies which had been in their family for years. Her mother’s cousin, Guy Vickers Trehane Dingle (1898-1939) was a curler, and it was probable that the trophies had been passed on from him. She hoped that someone in the curling world would like them or could re-use them in some way, perhaps as a trophy or would like them for a curling museum!
With a name like that it was not difficult to search for him in the RCCC Annuals of the 1930s and find that he had been a member and, latterly secretary, of Manchester Belle Vue Curling Club and had played for England in the International Match against Scotland a few times.
I arranged to go across to Malvern and to have a look at the trophies. Two of them were simple wooden blocks with glass on the top inscribed with curling lines, one of them with miniature curling stones, but no indication of provenance or what they might have been awarded for:
However the third one, amazingly was the Lycett Trophy, in a pretty sorry state with bashes and an ill fitting lid.
Over a century after it had last been played for it had been found. I knew immediately what I wanted to do with it. I live in Bedford, not far from the Duke of Bedford’s estate at Woburn Abbey and I though it would be so good if the trophy could be returned to there and maybe form part of a display. First of all though I wanted to get it restored back to its former glory.
Of course there was also the mystery as to how it had arrived with my contact in Malvern – why had the trophy been in her family for all this time?
As I said above Guy Dingle had been the secretary of the Manchester Belle Vue club and in the early part of the 20th century there were a lot of clubs in the Lancashire / Cumbria area. [By the way in the 1908 RCCC Annual there are 39 clubs listed in England though by 1939 this had dropped to 17.] One of the other clubs was Manchester Trafford but it is noted in the RCCC Annual of 1936 that it had withdrawn its RCCC membership. Guy Dingle had also been a member of this club.
On the Lycett Trophy, the winning club and the team members are listed for the years 1908 – 1913. In 1908 it was LCCC, in 1909 BVCC etc., so just club initials, but once again the RCCC Annuals tell the story as from those books it is possible to match the names of the winning teams listed on the trophy to the club abbreviations. In 1913, the last year on the Trophy, the winning club is TCC and the team members were A Darbyshire, R Currie, F Leiper and J D Johnston and guess what – they are listed as members of (Manchester) Trafford Curling Club (TCC) in the 1913 Annual.
So it is probable that the trophy was retained by the Trafford club when they won it in 1913 and that, since the competition was not played again, it then stayed in the Manchester area and who better to look after it than the secretary of the biggest club in the area, a certain G V T Dingle. I am sure there are many trophies in many houses around the country that have ended up in a similar situation.
After a few months search I discovered a silversmith in St Albans who would be able to restore the trophy and this was finally completed in June of this year with the result as seen below:
I then wrote to the Woburn Abbey estate and they were very excited about the discovery as in the restoration of the Abbey which is currrently being done they are going to dedicate a room to the Sporting Duchess and the trophy will be on display. Now if only we could find the Shield!
If you want to know more about the history of curling in your area then a very good website is available English Curling Places
On that page you will find a map with pins marking all the places where we have, so far, discovered that curling has been played at one time or another. By clicking on a pin, you will get information, including maps and newspaper cuttings, which have been used as evidence in locating the various venues. Some are still in existence; others have long since been redeveloped.
As well as ponds, the map shows the location of ice rinks where curling has been played in the past and one of those was the Prince's Skating Club which opened in 1896 in Knightsbridge, London, as a private skating venue. First records of curling there can be found in 1902, when it became home to the London Caledonian Curling Club, which played on Thursday evenings. The last ice activities at the rink were in 1915.
In 1903, the 11th Duke of Bedford purchased the club and his wife, the 11th Duchess of Bedford, Mary Du Caurroy Tribe, was one of the great sporting characters of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries. She was an accomplished angler and skater, was considered to be the top lady shooter of the day and was also a proficient pilot.
She was a patron of the London Caledonian Curling Club and in 1908 she presented a trophy, the Duchess of Bedford Shield, for an annual curling competition. In addition, another patron, Mr Forrest Lycett presented a trophy for the runners-up, in the form of a silver curling stone.
Here are a couple of pictures of winning teams with each of the trophies:
With the demise of curling as an activity at the Prince’s Club in 1915, it seems that the competition had a short history and the location of the 2 Trophies since then has been a mystery.
Let’s go forward 107 years. In June 2022 I received an email from a lady living in Great Malvern in Worcestershire. She had been in touch with Bob Cowan, the writer of the Curling History blog and he had suggested she contact me.
She had been clearing out her mother’s home and had come across some old curling trophies which had been in their family for years. Her mother’s cousin, Guy Vickers Trehane Dingle (1898-1939) was a curler, and it was probable that the trophies had been passed on from him. She hoped that someone in the curling world would like them or could re-use them in some way, perhaps as a trophy or would like them for a curling museum!
With a name like that it was not difficult to search for him in the RCCC Annuals of the 1930s and find that he had been a member and, latterly secretary, of Manchester Belle Vue Curling Club and had played for England in the International Match against Scotland a few times.
I arranged to go across to Malvern and to have a look at the trophies. Two of them were simple wooden blocks with glass on the top inscribed with curling lines, one of them with miniature curling stones, but no indication of provenance or what they might have been awarded for:
Of course there was also the mystery as to how it had arrived with my contact in Malvern – why had the trophy been in her family for all this time?
As I said above Guy Dingle had been the secretary of the Manchester Belle Vue club and in the early part of the 20th century there were a lot of clubs in the Lancashire / Cumbria area. [By the way in the 1908 RCCC Annual there are 39 clubs listed in England though by 1939 this had dropped to 17.] One of the other clubs was Manchester Trafford but it is noted in the RCCC Annual of 1936 that it had withdrawn its RCCC membership. Guy Dingle had also been a member of this club.
On the Lycett Trophy, the winning club and the team members are listed for the years 1908 – 1913. In 1908 it was LCCC, in 1909 BVCC etc., so just club initials, but once again the RCCC Annuals tell the story as from those books it is possible to match the names of the winning teams listed on the trophy to the club abbreviations. In 1913, the last year on the Trophy, the winning club is TCC and the team members were A Darbyshire, R Currie, F Leiper and J D Johnston and guess what – they are listed as members of (Manchester) Trafford Curling Club (TCC) in the 1913 Annual.
So it is probable that the trophy was retained by the Trafford club when they won it in 1913 and that, since the competition was not played again, it then stayed in the Manchester area and who better to look after it than the secretary of the biggest club in the area, a certain G V T Dingle. I am sure there are many trophies in many houses around the country that have ended up in a similar situation.
After a few months search I discovered a silversmith in St Albans who would be able to restore the trophy and this was finally completed in June of this year with the result as seen below:
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