Roaring on The Curly

“It is almost 60 years since I left Darlington, but I would love my youthful memories to be rekindled,” he says. “Our favourite playground was a curling pond – which we referred to as “The Curly”.

It was behind The Causeway, opposite Darlington Fever Hospital.

“When I knew it in the 1930s and 1940s, it was simply a large pond with steps at each end. It was a bit of a paradise for fishing for tadpoles, sticklepacks, waterboatmen etc, and for building and floating rafts which immediately sank.

“My question is: was it built as a curling pond – and what happened to it?”

Curling was known as “the roaring game” and a century or more ago it was a roaring success in Darlington. A curling club was formed in January 1879 in the Fleece Hotel where Boyes is today. It was inspired by two factors.

Firstly, Scottish economic migrants had come to the town searching for work, and bringing their Aberdeen granite stones with them.

Secondly, there was a series of extremely cold winters – in 1879-80, for example, it was possible to skate along the Tees from High Coniscliffe through Blackwell and Croft to Middleton One Row.

Suddenly, the game became fashionable. At first, ornamental ponds in the grounds of stately homes were pressed into service as curling venues: there was Polam Pond, in the grounds of what is now Polam Hall School, and Pease’s Pond, in the grounds of Pierremont off Woodland Road (unfortunately, a match between Darlington and Malton on Pease’s Pond in 1879 was abandoned when a sudden thaw set in).

Many years ago, Memories was shown around the grounds of Forcett Hall, near Aldborough St John, where there is a large lake. Beside it, is a large manmade hillock beneath which is an ice house – before the days of refrigerators, ice was raked off the lake and stored under the hillock until summer. Most relevantly, though, the sluices running from the ice house had several old curling stones lying in them, showing that the roaring game was once played there.

The largest manmade curling pond in the district was, as Mr Morton remembers, dug on Hundens Farm. It was about 18 inches deep with a concrete bottom.

Two more factors influenced the decline of curling after the First World War. Firstly, bowls started to become popular, and secondly, a series of warm winters in the 1920s prevented the ponds from freezing.

Forcett Forcett Hall with its large lake, which was once used for curling

So when Mr Morton was growing up, “The Curly” probably would have been a schoolboy’s muddy paradise.

The Curly was filled in during the 1940s when Eastbourne School was built on its site.