The Skating Club was formed by the Curling Club in 1880 by selling shares in a separate organisation, funding the creation of a skating pond next to the curling pond.
There is an 1895 account in the local newspaper of someone skating about 15 miles up the River Esk, starting from Langholm, after it froze over, an extremely rare event.
There is little mention in the paper of the skating pond in the 1910s, but the police’s lost and found service reported the finding of a ‘watch appendage’ there in January 1914, so it seems to have been in use at that time.