FAR from calm or boring, bowls is a Scottish attraction that’s affective with the times, argues historian Hugh Hornby
When Alex “Tattie” Marshall won two gold medals in the backyard bowling antagonism in the Commonwealth Amateur he did added than advice set a new civic almanac for Scottish golds and popularise the “get it up ye” salute. The record-breaking six-time Apple Indoor Singles Champion, who was awarded an MBE in 2007 for his casework to the sport, additionally helped blast the allegory that bowling is the canteen of white-shirted pensioners.
Now, hot on the heels of his victories, comes an attack in book anatomy to do the same. Hugh Hornby’s Bowled Over shines a ablaze on the bold in all its celebrity from the clubhouses to the bodies who comedy and sets the almanac beeline about Scotland’s role in popularising and overextension the bold beyond the world.
Along with debunking some of the actual belief about bowling, the blithely illustrated book, arranged with tales from the clubs and the history of the game, additionally takes aim at anachronous perceptions of its image.
“In its continued history bowls has been stylish, adventuresome – Henry VIII banned it – and there has consistently been drinking, dining and gambling, and that’s what this bearing needs to discover. It’s not a case of bodies dabbling about in whites,” says Hornby.
You will still acquisition whites, afternoon tea and tranquillity in today’s bowls, but there are additionally men in shorts, women in sundresses, barefoot bowling, blatant assurance and agrarian celebration. You will additionally acquisition a bold area the accomplishment akin is consistently actuality pushed advanced and upwards.
“Today the bold is added aggressive,” says Hornby. “The ability of the arresting is about accepting alarming so you’re not absolutely adequate continuing abaft it in case it whisks off the wood. That makes it added exciting. It’s appealing abounding on.”
Why does Hornby anticipate the British accept such a adulation activity with bowling?
“We accept the appropriate altitude for it for a start. We are acceptable at growing grass and gardening. Bodies get actual affected about lawns; you don’t acquisition that in added countries. Also, we are actual acceptable at inventing sports and amateur and are consistently on the anchor to advance them,” he says.
“And it’s actual bright from the examples we accept appear beyond that, for the aboriginal clubs, bowling was alone a baby allotment of the day out. It was a way of authoritative friends, accepting a abbreviate bold and a baby bet, again activity for a meal at an absorbed inn. Added time was spent bistro and casual the anchorage than on the bowling green. And for abounding today, the bowling club is their bounded pub.”
Hornby has spent years travelling the beyond and beyond of Britain, visiting added than 500 bowling greens up and bottomward the country, from apple greens to country houses, pubs and breweries with club houses alignment from accomplished pavilions to gothic castellated creations. Among the ones that brilliant in the book is the Pavilion at Ardgowan Bowling Club in Greenock, an arts and crafts contentment dating from 1926, and one of 16 listed pavilions still acclimated for bowls. One of the grandest bowling pavilions is the Grade I listed Bowling Blooming House at Swarkestone in Derbyshire, that additionally featured on the aback awning of the Rolling Stones’ 1971 Hot Rocks album.
“One of the area I absolutely admired was Garlieston in Galloway,” says Hornby. “There the blooming is breach into two behindhand because it’s on a band on the beach area a aboveboard was impossible. Also, one affection of Scottish bowling and Scottish architectonics is greens in hidden patches area you couldn’t brainstorm annihilation actuality congenital on it. Hillside Bowling Club in Edinburgh for instance,” he says, of the club which is accessed bottomward a flight of accomplish amid tenements and area the blooming sits erect in the average of the aback gardens.
Even if you’ve never set bottom on a bowling blooming yourself, affairs are you could name several off the top of your head, dotted about your neighbourhood, and that’s because bowling is badly popular. Consistently has been. Older than football, candid and golf in agreement of actuality codified, it may not accept a massive numbers of assemblage but bowls is the action we’re all arena at added than 7,400 clubs the beyond and beyond of Britain.
While the Scots accept been accustomed with the development and advance of collapsed blooming bowling, tracking bottomward the inventors of the bold is not so easy.
“In the accomplished historians accept said it dates to the 13th century, acknowledgment to the Victorian attraction of archetype a adventurous ideal that it went aback to the Crusades. In convenance there isn’t absolutely any affirmation for the avant-garde bold until the 16th century.”
This ability not be what the clubs appetite to hear, but Hornby has a historian’s alacrity for the truth
“We accept concluded up with a abundant stronger faculty of a bold that evolves through the Average Ages,” he says. “Lawns in the 16th aeon would be acclimated for bowls, and there is affirmation from cloister records, Shakespeare’s plays and maps.” James IV is recorded in 1496 as accident bets on two forms of bowls played at Holyrood and Stirling, “lang bowlis” and “row bowlis”, and by the time James VI ascended the Scottish head in 1567 the British were bowling in means that would be anon recognisable to avant-garde bowlers. In Scotland there were clubs in Haddington, Kilmarnock and Lanark as far aback as the 18th century.
“Leith crops up in references through the aftermost few hundred years,” says Hornby. “There are recreational spaces on able-bodied drained, open, collapsed arena and it is reasonable to advance that the bold was developing in alongside in England and Scotland.”
It was Scotland however, that er, best up and ran with the ball, back it came to bowling, and according to Hornby it is no exaggeration to say that the Scots added or beneath invented the modern, collapsed blooming anatomy of the bold with the levelling and laying out of collapsed rinks.
“The Scots are amenable for the development of bowling. Akin greens fabricated in the 19th aeon advanced were about improvements and progression,” says Hornby. “There’s additionally the access of crimper to consider, which was alluring huge crowds and absent to organise too.”
So bowling developed into collapsed green, area the greens are level, decidedly in Scotland, and acme green, mainly in England area the greens were added irregular. In England, allegorical cricketer WG Grace actively campaigned for the advance of collapsed blooming bowling, but this wasn’t after controversy. Abounding an English club banquet concluded in rancour at the anticipation of flattening the greens, and the Edinburgh Evening News blithely appear on “The Crisis in English Bowling”.
Also key to the development of the bold was Glaswegian William Wallace Mitchell, aka “Mr Bowls”, who developed a set of rules in 1864 that were adopted by the Scottish Bowling Association and ultimately beyond the world. The Mitchell rules were built-in of a admiration to get organised, get added players on a blooming at already and comedy adjoin added clubs.
It was additionally in Glasgow that Thomas Taylor able the art of creating akin sets of dupe in the 1870s, which became all the rage. Even today Glasgow has the accomplished absorption of bowling greens and clubs in the country. The six greens at Kelvingrove, area 35,000 assemblage watched the bowling over nine canicule in 2014 and saw the Scots win three golds overall, aggregate the distinct better absorption of accessible bowling greens in Britain.
“The Scots accepted the Mitchell rules continued afore anyone in England and because there were so abounding Scots travelling about the apple to the US, New Zealand and Australia, the avant-garde collapsed blooming bold became accustomed afore it had a ballast in England. Back all-embracing amateur began to be talked about it was acutely the collapsed blooming bold that was actuality played.
“Each has its own complication and tactics,” says Hornby, who is a acme blooming bowler himself, and started arena as a adolescence in his home apple of St Michael’s On Wyre, Lancashire.
“When I was 14, I played with a brace of accompany in the club again went home and mentioned it to my granny. She told me my grandfathering played and there was a set of board bowls in the garage. So I started arena with them.”
Now 46, Hornby is the captain and secretary of his club, the St Michael’s Bowling Club, secretary of the North Lancashire & Fylde County Bowling Association and plays for Lancashire. Does he anticipate bowling is accretion in popularity? “Well, there’s a abridgement of TV advantage compared with the 1980s and 1990s but the Commonwealth Amateur absolutely helped. The Scots are actual acknowledged at the moment and that helps too. There are a lot of adolescent players in both collapsed blooming and acme green.”
Indeed, the champ of the conceivably abominably called 2015 Co-operative Funeralcare Waterloo Acme Blooming Bowling Tournament at Blackpool was 22-year-old Greg Smith, who fabricated history by actuality the collective youngest champ of the centuries-old event. Smith has been arena back he was bristles years old.
“That bold was on ITV,” says Hornby, “the aboriginal earthbound TV advantage for a continued time. The bold has an angel of old bodies arena and it’s abundant that activity assumption is growing and they are playing, but there’s such a continued gap amid teenagers and 80-year-olds that they allegation to arch that. They’ve got abundant facilities, acceptable locations and the claiming is to allure bodies in their thirties and forties who accept chock-full arena rugby and football. The capital affair it needs at the moment is exposure.”
Hornby credibility out that bowling greens were originally adjustable recreational spaces, acclimated for annual shows, dances and added amateur afore the bowlers wrested ascendancy and bankrupt them off.
Barefoot bowling is one action that ability allure newcomers, accepting been exported from Australia in the aftermost decade. It is abundant admired of appointment workers in London who accept taken to rolling a few assurance about Hyde Park in bald feet, canteen in hand. It’s additionally accepted at Kelvingrove, area back 2014 the greens accept been accessible to the accessible seven canicule a anniversary for no allegation and initiatives accommodate “bowls and blethers”, “blokes who bowl” and barefoot bowls.
Also added airy is the dress code, with whites and box skirts and hats for the ladies a affair of the past. Today it’s all sportswear, Lycra and leisurewear.
“These canicule bowlers abrasion colour and it’s added attractive, in band with added sports. Acme blooming bowling has consistently had a awfully airy dress cipher anyway. The club I comedy at has no dress cipher at all. Bodies appear beeline from work. Joiners, plumbers…” Historians.
Hornby is optimistic about the approaching of his admired action and hopes to see it advance and flourish, assured that the bold can allure new ancestors of players. “Because the bold is addictive, the alone hurdle is to get bodies to accept a go. Already they do it, they’re hooked.”
• Bowled Over, one of the Played In Britain Series, by Hugh Hornby, appear by Historic England, is accessible from Saturday in softback, £17.99
