From Pall Mall to Shin-Kicking: Regency Sports Not in the Olympics

Are you enjoying the Olympics, or are you one of those people who changes the channel whenever you hear that majestic theme song start? Whether you’re an avid fan or a couldn’t-care-less, there’s no doubt that the Olympics are a high profile event that get a lot of attention whenever they are held.

The Olympics didn’t take place during the regency period, of course, but regency people did enjoy a number of physical sports, many of which are still popular today. But I don’t want to talk about the sports that regency folks enjoyed and are still in existence. I want to talk about several sports that were popular in that time period but eventually went away, or at least drastically changed form. I wonder how many of these would have been played by our beloved Jane Austen characters? Are there any that you might want to try today?

Pall Mall

This is the sport of croquet as they played it in Jane Austen’s time. As far as I can tell, pall mall was played with different equipment and on somewhat different surfaces than croquet is now. The mallets were much taller and the balls a bit smaller. As many Austen fans know, pall mall figures prominently in the Bridgerton book and television series. What those fans may not know is that, when pall mall lost its popularity, the malls where the games played were ideal for shopkeepers to set up shops, meet customers, and sell their wares. Hence the origin of our modern term shopping mall.

If you, like me, are one of the few people in Austen land who has never read or watched Bridgerton, here is a wonderful sequence of the main characters playing their annual game. It looks delightful!

Cudgel play

This was a martial art that focused on people (men, of course) hitting each other with wooden sticks. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But as a modern day martial artist, I can assure you that there is a great deal of strategy involved in such a seemingly easy sport. After all, do you strike the head, the body, or the legs? And how do you get close enough to strike without being struck in return? Unlike modern martial arts, I doubt they used much protective equipment, so you would need to be able to read your opponent and to act and react very quickly! Not for the timid!!!

Court tennis aka “real” tennis

This is much like our modern “lawn” tennis, but it was (and is!) played on an indoor court with features like sloped roofs, galleries, and stone walls, all of which are elements of the game. Players play the ball off of these surfaces using a small racket with an angled head. The rules are, of course, way more complicated. (Read: incomprehensible!) For example, you put the ball in play by bouncing it off of the sloped roof at the other end of the court. It only gets crazier from there.

This was originally the sport of kings and nobility. It eventually morphed into our modern “lawn” tennis to make it more accessible to the masses. I can’t even play lawn tennis, so this would be a no-go for me. But it looks like fun!

Bowls/Lawn bowling

Are you thinking of our modern bowling, just played on grass? Think again! It was not as simple as just throwing a perfectly round ball down a set path towards a set of pins. I would say it was more like a combination of modern bowling and curling. And maybe golf? I’ll let this video explain it:

Let me know if you try this. Good luck!

Shin kicking

This is exactly what it sounds like. Two people grab each other by the shoulders and kick each other’s shins, and the first one to fall down loses. Sometimes people padded their legs with protection, like straw, but sometimes they didn’t. This is still done at country or historic fairs as an exhibition. It looks pretty brutal to me.

Can you imagine Darcy and Elizabeth engaging in these sports during her visit to Pemberley? Pall mall might work, and I could see Lizzy tricking Darcy during a rousing set of bowls. But shin kicking might be taking things a bit too far. 🙂

If you could pick one of these sports to make a comeback and become an Olympic sport, which would it be? Have you played any of these yourself? Please let me know in the comments!