Prince's Skating Club

Prince's Skating Club was an ice rink in the Knightsbridge area of London, England. It saw a number of firsts for ice hockey in Britain and Europe.

Prince's Skating Club
advertising a suffragette exhibition
LocationKnightsbridge, London
OwnerPrince's Club
SurfaceIce
Opened7 November 1896 (1896-11-07)
Closed1917
Tenants
Princes Ice Hockey Club (1896–1914)
London Canadians (1902–????)

The rink was opened on Montpelier Square on 7 November 1896 by the Prince's Sporting Club. It operated on a membership-only basis and was aimed at the elite of British figure skaters who wished to practise on uncrowded ice.[1]

Prince's was the second large rectangular rink in Britain after Stockport, its ice measuring 210 by 52 feet (64 by 16 metres). This made it an ideal venue for the developing sport of ice hockey.

The rink closed in summer 1917. The building was later used by Daimler Hire, and ultimately demolished in the mid-1970s.

Ice hockey

The Princes Ice Hockey Club was founded at the rink at the end of 1896. It began playing challenge matches in early 1897, initially against the three existing teams in England: Niagara, Brighton and the Royal Engineers.

In March 1900, the rink hosted the first Ice Hockey Varsity Match, won 7–6 by Oxford, although Oxford insisted on playing with bandy sticks and a lacrosse ball.[2] The next year, another Varsity Match was held, this time using a puck and hockey skates.

In 1902, London Canadians was founded as a second ice hockey team at the rink. They and Princes participated in Europe's first ice hockey league, which they contested against Argyll and the Amateur Skating Club, both based at Hengler's Ice Rink, and Cambridge University. The league started in November 1903 and was completed in February 1904 after eight games. Canadians won the tournament, with Princes taking second place.

The league was not repeated, as Hengler's closed. Instead, Princes began undertaking annual European tours (as did London Canadians' successors, Oxford Canadians), while teams such as Sporting Club Lyon, Brussels Club des Patineurs and C. P. P. Paris came to play the London-based teams. The 1908 match with Paris was the first under Ligue Internationale de Hockey sur Glace (international) rules in Britain; it was also notable as Thomas Sopwith played in goal.

In March 1910, the first England-Scotland ice hockey match was held at the rink, but the sport was suspended at the start of World War I. Despite this, the British Ice Hockey Association was founded at the rink in 1914.

Figure skating

In October 1908, the figure skating events of the Olympics were held at the rink – the first ice sport ever included in the Olympics and the only occasion Olympic ice events have been held in Britain.[3]

Exhibitions

The rink was also used for art exhibitions. The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers held its annual exhibition there in 1898 and 1899.[4]

The Women's Exhibition hosted by the Women's Social and Political Union and funded by Clara Mordan was held at the Prince's Ice Rink in May 1909.[5][6] Its organisers included Amy Katherine Browning and Sylvia Pankhurst.[7]

References
  1. [s.n.] (June 2004). The Establishment of Artificial Ice-rinks. News off the Edge, news bulletin of the Ice Skating Association of Queensland. 39. Archived 17 June 2005.
  2. "Club Heritage". The Oxford Ice Hockey Trust. Archived from the original on 6 July 2015.
  3. Theodore Andrea Cook (1909). The Fourth Olympiad, being the Official Report: The Olympic Games of 1908. The British Olympic Association. p. 39, p. 284. Accessed September 2013.
  4. The International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers: Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951. Glasgow University|. Accessed September 2013.
  5. "Clara Mordan". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 19 November 2017.
  6. [Sheila Stowell, A Stage of their own: Feminist playwrights of the suffrage era (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 53]
  7. Joanna Dunham, ‘Browning , Amy Katherine (1881–1978)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/61369, accessed 19 November 2017

Further reading
  • Martin C. Harris, Homes of British Ice Hockey

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