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Summary

Description

Dated 1904. Single storey, timber boarded pavilion facing bowling green to S; advanced single end bays linked by open veranda and gabled feature to centre above veranda. Brick base, painted chevron pattern timber boarding. Timber modillion eaves cornice. Timber mullions.

S(PRINCIPAL) ELEVATION: 2-step flight to concrete veranda, columns with fluted capitals supporting roof with boarded soffit, timber balustrade and benches. 2-leaf glazed entrance doors to centre, flanked by quadripartite windows forming continuous glazing, panelled door to right. Gabled feature with decorative barge boards; date and name of club painted to gablehead.

W ELEVATION: canted ends; 4 windows to centre, 2 to right, boarded to left.

E ELEVATION: canted ends; 4 windows to centre, 2 to left, door and window to right.

N ELEVATION: weatherboarding to rear; window to extreme left and right, door with small flanking windows off-set to left.

Predominantly 2-pane lower lights with 6-pane upper lights. Grey slate roof with decorative terracotta ridge tiles and cast-iron finials terminating ridges.

RAILINGS: wrought-iron hoop railings forming boundary of bowling green.

Statement of Special Interest

Well-detailed early 20th century bowling pavilion. It retains good architectural details such as the columned veranda and decorative bargeboarding. The building is part of Mid Links, a string of municipal gardens with sporting facilities, in Montrose and it is an important representation of the town's social history. Plans dated 1895 exist for a similar, but not identical design. A new clubhouse, completed 1991, is adjacent to this bowling pavilion.

The bowling club is situated in Hope Paton Gardens, which was laid out with a garden and bowling green by the Montrose Burgh Surveyor, Sidney Louis Christie and opened on 31st August 1904. The design was based on one by Christie's predecessor, JR Findlay. Hope Paton Gardens is named after Miss Hope Henderson Paton, the daughter of merchant John Paton, who co-founded the Chapel Works, Montrose (see separate listing). Hope Paton was well known for supporting local charities and in 1902 she gave £1,000 to the Town Council for the setting out of a bowling green as a further extension of the Mid Links. Mid Links, formerly a golfing area, was laid out in the 1870s as a string of municipal gardens with sporting facilities. Bowling was popular at that time and the success of the Melville bowling green (see separate listing), which had opened in 1878, made another public green a necessity.

Lawn bowls today is a hugely popular sport in Scotland. It has a long and distinguished history with the earliest reference to the game in Scotland appearing in 1469, when James IV played a variation of the game referred to as 'lang bowlis' at St Andrews in Fife. The first public bowling green in Scotland was laid out in 1669 at Haddington, near Edinburgh, however it was not until 1864 that the rules of the modern game were committed to writing by William Mitchell of Glasgow in his Manual of Bowl-Playing. Machine manufactured standard bowls were invented by Thomas Taylor Ltd, also of Glasgow, in 1871 and the Scottish Bowling Association was formed in 1892. The advent of indoor bowling also began in Scotland around 1879. Today there are around 900 clubs in Scotland with an estimated 90,000 active lawn bowls players.

List description updated as part of the sporting buildings thematic study (2012-13).

References

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