Dunfermline Athletic

Founding of Boreland Curling Club


The Club was founded in 1979.

Founder Members:


The original members were all neighbours and friends living in the Boreland Estate in Inverkeithing. To avoid spending every Friday evening in the pub they decided to play some curling. It was mistakenly believed that this would avoid them being involved in taking strong drink!

The Founder Members were:

- Derek Arnott
- Alistair Bell (no longer an active playing member)
- Bill Linton
- Eric Low (no longer an active playing member)
- Robin Park (no longer an active Boreland playing member)
- Bill Rennie
- Bob Tait
- Tommy Wallace (died 2007)

The Early Days:


In the beginning they simply took some ice at Kinross and played amongst themselves. After a couple of seasons, they formed Boreland Curling Club and decided to formally apply for membership of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club (RCCC), now also known as Scottish Curling. The Club was admitted to the RCCC in 1981, sponsored by Fossoway Curling Club.

Annual General Meetings:


In the early years the club was run on an extremely informal basis and unfortunately the minutes from the early meetings were lost from the boot of a past secretary’s car when his car broke down on the Forth Road Bridge and the wind blew the papers out of the boot!!! This has set a long tradition of members losing trophies etc belonging to the club (at least for a month or two!).

In these early days, Annual General Meetings were held either in a member’s house or in a local pub. These tended to be rather lengthy affairs. For example, one of the first AGM’s held at Bill Rennie’s house was convened at 7pm and closed at 5am! A few years later, an AGM was held in the Bruce Arms in Limekilns. It was convened at 7pm but, by closing time, the members were still on item 2 of the agenda and had to adjourn to Derek Arnott’s house where it is still uncertain if the final items on the agenda were ever discussed!

In 1984 the AGM moved to the Coaledge Tavern, near Crossgates, where the usual debates took place. Unfortunately, on that occasion proceedings were interrupted when a brawl broke out between two of the locals. No members were involved or hurt but it did add a bit of excitement to the evening!

The club was becoming slightly larger with membership increasing from the original 8 to 12 then 16 and by 1988 20 members. In keeping with this new-found status, the AGM that year was held in the Board Room of the City Hotel in Dunfermline. At that meeting two momentous decisions were taken:

1. The meeting agreed that the club should have a formal Constitution and this was drafted and adopted the following year; and
2. It was agreed that a Dinner and Court should be held the following year (1989) to mark the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the Club.

Each year discussion took place on opening up the club to women and, each year, it was recorded that by a narrow margin the decision was to remain an all-male club.

Picture above:

Four of the Founder Members (Eric Low, Bob Tait, Bill Linton, Derek Arnott) still curling at Boreland`s 35th Celebration!


Club Dinners:


Robin Park, as Club President, chaired the first Dinner and Court which was highly successful and saw a record number of ‘young curlers’ join the club. Being a small club, the success of the dinner depended on a significant number of guests from neighbouring clubs coming along and supporting the event. For this reason, it was decided that dinners should be held only every second year so as not to put too big a strain of the support of neighbouring clubs. The club has continued to hold dinners on that basis ever since.

The inaugural dinner in 1989 was held in the King Malcolm Hotel in Dunfermline and at least two further dinners were also held there. Guests in the Hotel apparently expressed some surprise to hear chains rattling and goats being led into the reception area. The club then held a few dinners at the Brucefield Hotel in Dunfermline before it closed down.

The club’s most recent dinners since 2015 have been held in the Queen’s Hall in Charlestown. The venue has proved very popular allowing us to serve our famous Clyde Steamers (with a secret recipe introduced by Andy Stevenson and know only to very few members) as guests arrive for the evening. The room`s layout is also ideal for all the other dinner activities!



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