Dr Neil's Garden

This guide to Dr Neil's Garden in Edinburgh opens on the loch's edge with a question: could a handful of freezing Edinburgh gentlemen really have written curling rules the sport still follows worldwide? It follows the Duddingston Curling Society back to eighteen-oh-three, the architect William Henry Playfair's octagonal tower built to keep their stones cold, and the minister who later borrowed its upper room as a painting studio. Listen for why that tower carries his name instead of the curling club's.