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Lock into history of pub games
Played at the Pub. By Arthur Taylor. English Heritage, £14.99
IT was grumpily noted this summer by the Australian cricket captain, Ricky Ponting, and severely criticised on the letters pages of the quality press: the rowdy behaviour of cricket fans following the England team through this year’s Ashes series brought forward ideas such as banning alcohol, or serving weak beer.
Yet mixing alcohol and games is certainly not a recent trend as this new book tracing the history of games you can play in the comfort of your local testifies.
Author Arthur Taylor, a pub historian working for English Heritage, has trawled pubs, inns and taverns to find a nation very much in thrall to odd contests of skill and wit for you to partake in while you sup a pint. He explains the way to play the once widespread quoits – a game where you lob a metal ring into a bed of clay and the winner is the person whose doughnut has landed at the most extreme angle without falling over. Sadly, his research shows there is a wealth of traditional pub games that are slowly being forgotten.
“We know little about these games until the modern era because for centuries they were played by people who did not write or hold positions of power, and therefore did not leave their imprint upon history,” he says.
Still, archives marking such things as proclamations by Henry III banning the clergy from heading to the inn for a game of dice or chess gives clues of their longevity.
What emerges from the pages of Arthur’s book is a history of bizarre and eccentric contests that look a lot more fun to do at the pub than stare at fruit machines.
Hampstead’s Freemasons Arms in Downshire Hill features. It still has a skittles alley and boasts, according to the book, the “most bulbous and heaviest pins of all”.
While the pub itself is now known for a summer pint garden, the skittles alley survives – and when you play a game there, you are partaking in a contest that has its roots in ancient times, and one, some say, that is good for the character. As Thomas Hughes wrote in his famous book, Tom Brown’s School Days, “Life isn’t all beer and skittles; but beer and skittles, or something better of the same sort, must form a good part of every Englishman’s education.”
DAN CARRIER
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