Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

Registration
Edit profile

catalogue
auction
shopping cart
shipping

history
makers

search
faq
news
links
about
contact

Clubmakers

J & R Crighton
Carnoustie
Robert Crighton was one of several blacksmiths who made the transition from general smithing to specialised cleek manufacturing. (Note that both his name and the firm’s are rendered as Crighton and Crichton in both official records (plus a Creighton) and contemporary newspaper reports).

He was born at Idvies Hill near Forfar in Angus on 25 September 1864 to John Crighton and his wife Elizabeth McNicol Bremner. He followed the trade of his father, who was described as a master blacksmith, and appears on the 1881 census living at home as an apprentice blacksmith.

Happily bashing horseshoes he won firsr prize at the 1888 Angus Show for the best shod draught horse and, at the same event, in 1898 he was demonstrating the latest innovations in ploughshares. By this time he had moved to the Westhaven end of Carnoustie and established the blacksmithing business of J & R Crighton. There was no “J” active in clubmaking but perhaps the initial was for his wife Jane, née Anderson.

The firm produced clubs at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, both for their own sale and as wholesalers to other clubmakers. They won a medal for their craftsmanship at the exhibition which accompanied the Open Championship in St Andrews in 1910.

They used a heart pierced by an arrow as their cleekmark and this continued to be used by Thomas Harrower, when he used the business to produce his patent clubs in 1912.

The circumstances of the transfer of the business are not yet clear to me. Presumably Crighton’s business failed and, as it was not a limited company, Robert Crighton, as sole partner, was personally responsible for its debts, and entered into a trust deed with creditors (an agreement to pay a certain amount each month until the debts were satisfied) in May 1912 which was finalised in October of that year. Despite these debts the business had been advertised for sale as a going concern in the preceding three months. Perhaps they were making Harrower's patent clubs while he remained in New Jersey before the business passed to Cochrane's in 1913.

Robert Crighton died on 8 December 1916 and is buried in Barry Churchyard.

Search the catalogue for clubs by this maker