Skittles - History and Useful Information

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Skittles History

Skittles or Nine Pins, the forerunner of 10 pin bowling, has long been played in the Inns of England. In general, players take turns to throw wooden balls down a lane at the end of which are several wooden skittles in an attempt to knock them all over.  There are a number of skittle games across England and there have been many more in the past.  In Germany, in the 3rd or 4th century monks played a game with a kegel which was a club carried for self defence.  In the game, the kegel represented a sin or temptation and the monks would throw stones at it until they knocked it over.  The modern German term for skittles is Kegelen.

There are two 14th century manuscripts which show a game called club Kayles (from the French "quilles" or skittles) and which depict a skittles game in which one skittle is bigger, differently shaped, and in most cases positioned so as to be the most difficult to knock over.  The throwers, in the pictures, are about to launch a long club-like object at the skittles underarm.  The large skittle is presumably a king pin as featured in some of the modern versions of skittles.  The fact that the thrower is not using a ball is not at all unusual - the Skittles cousin, Aunt Sally, still uses a baton shaped stick to chuck at the doll and many modern skittles games throw a object called a "cheese" instead of a ball.  Effectively a cheese is any "lump" which is used to throw at the skittles and shapes can vary from barrel shaped to, well, cheese shaped, really.

All forms of Skittles feature projectiles being propelled from one end of an alley in an effort to knock down nine pins stood in a square at the other end.  That is about all that many of the games do have in common, though, and over the years, Skittles developed regional variations in skittle size and shape, skittle alley length, use of a kingpin, size and shape of the balls/cheeses and the rules began to vary quite radically across England.  One of the most marked divisions is in the method for actually throwing the balls or cheeses.  In London, the heavy cheese is flung full toss directly at the skittles, over in the West country balls are rolled down the full length of the alley while in the midlands the Long Alley game usually requires the cheese or ball to bounce a single time before hitting the skittles. 

Parallel to these developments, the phenomenon of miniaturisation must have also been occuring, as it did for so many other old English games.  This would tend to happen so that pub landlords could retain the enjoyment of the game while no longer requiring the space-consuming skittles alley in order to play.  Some of these table-top versions of skittles are still enormously popular - especially the version known as "Devil Amongst the Tailors" or "Table Skittles" - please see the Table Skittles page for full details of each miniaturised skittles game.  In the case of the peculiar Rolly Polly, a heavily biased ball was developed - possibly as another space saving exercise.  

The game pictured is from the author's collection.  It was bought from Masters Traditional Games.

Skittles Games Still played today

West Country Skittles is  the most popular and basic version of Alley Skittles wherein 9 skittles are arranged in a square at the end of an alley.  The alley is around 24 feet long and each turn starts with all the skittles standing and consists of three throws down the alley.  If all the pins are knocked down, then they are all reset.  So the maximum score in one turn is 27. 

The picture of Western Skittles to the left is published by kind permission of Eric Brain, Bath University.

There are variations from town to town and even pub to pub as to the further details. For instance in Dorset, back boards are installed at the end of each alley. This allows players to use the trusy "Dorset flop" technique wherein the back board is used to 'launch' a player from squatting position down the alley at which point both hands propel the ball towards the skittles! In the Bridport League, apparently only the middle pin is re-erected once all nine have been toppled giving a maxiumum score of 11. Balls can be made from a variety of hardwoods although Lignum Vitae is the traditional favourite. Many leagues these days insist upon heavy rubber balls. This author's research has discovered 4 main types of pin as follows:

Wales / Glamorgan - the smallest of the pins at 6 - 8 inches high, thin with a bobble on top.

Gloucester - Barrel shaped pin about 10 inches high.

Bristol - A bulge in the middle about the same height as the Gloucester variety. Sometimes with a kingpin.

Devon - Very large pins with a bulge in the middle. 12 inches high with a kingpin that can be up to 15 inches high.

In the East Midlands, people play Long Alley, a skilful game in which the pitch is 33 - 36 feet long and the projectiles are flung almost the full length of the alley where they must bounce a single time before ploughing into the skittles.  Most Long Alley games feature a Kingpin which must be hit first or else no score is counted...   Local variations aside, Long Alley itself appear to be split into two main varieties.   In Leicestershire, barrel shaped cheeses are thrown and the skittles are tapered and relatively thin.  Experts use the eccentric shape to produce clever angles upon the bounce and thus can topple skittles in arrangements that would not be possible with an ordinary ball.  Up in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, balls, often roughly hewn and traditionally of applewood, are used to topple skittles that are club shaped.

Old English Skittles or London Skittles is a majestic game in which the alley is around 21 feet, the bomb-shaped pins are 14 1/2 inches high, 6 1/2 inches across the middle (3 inches diameter at either end) and weigh 9 pounds.  The discus-shaped cheese, too, is enormous varying from 8 1/2 to 12 inches in diameter and weighing between nine and twelve pounds but none-the-less, the cheeses are thrown in order that they hit the skittles directly without touching the floor first.  The game is now very rare but can still be played at the famous Freemasons Arms in Hampstead.

To the right are shown nine London pins at the Freemasons Arms by kind permission of Paul Robinson.

An unusual game called Rolly Polly or Half-Bowl is or used to be played in Hertfordshire in which a bowl with huge bias is used.  The ball is rolled at 12 pins in a circle, the catch being that the bowl must go past the circle of pins and another pin a bit further away before returning, due to the bias, in the reverse direction.  The game can be thought of as a version of Table Skittles played on the floor with the bias replacing the need for the suspension of the ball on a pole and some have speculated that this is how Rolly Polly originated.  It seems more likely, however, that the biased ball is just an alternative solution to try to reduce the amount of space needed for the skittles game. Recent information suggests that the game is in fact of Belgian origin. Both a skittles variant as described above and a Bowls game called Rolle Bolle have been reported. The latter involves sending large disks with a large bias in an effort to get them close to a stake at the other end of the game area.

Ten Pin bowling is the North American version of Skittles and is believed to be based upon the Skittles game from Holland.  It was probably the Dutch who took their version of skittles to America in the seventeenth century although another theory believes it is of English origin. Either way, the game fell into disrepute before long as it tended to attract crowds of undesirables and to be played by gamblers.   Consequently, a law was introduced to ban the game but since the law only mentioned "nine pin bowling", people simply added another skittle and called the game ten-pin bowling to avoid penalty!

Finally, Aunt Sally is in the skittles family but is a game sufficiently different to merit a section of it's own.

Rules

A description and rules for Skittles are available for free from Masters Traditional Games

Buy Skittles and Table Skittles

You can buy a variety of different style of skittles pins and balls from Masters Traditional Games.  Table skittles and a portable skittles alley are also available.

Pubs & Leagues

Please see the separate Skittles Pubs & Leagues page.

jm at tradgames.org.uk
Copyright © 1997-2005 by James Masters.