BOWLING.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 22, 11 September 1911, Page 7

BOWLING.

AN ANCIENT GAME. A representative of “Lloyd’s Weekly” recently endeavoured to find out ’.viiich bowling club in England was the oldest; and the result of lbs investigations is of great interest to bowlers, many of whom probably do not know how old the game is. The Southampton Club is generally believed to bo the oldest. An old plan if Kill depicted a spot where the “genteel merchants of the town did take their recreation.” But the Southampton Club is not content with such m age, and its card of rules bears the inscription “Established prior to 1299.” Milton Regis, another ’ctoian dub, has more complete records, from the fact that it was the custom of the dub to pay rent to the churchwardens every Easter, and in the musty records of the old church are found en--1 l ies of the payments which show that for three hundred years at least the samo lias been played on the green without a break. Indeed, it could be said to go back much further, for .in entry dated 1601 states that a part of the Butts has been used as a bowling green “since time immemorial.” Assuming that the scribe exaggerated mo might say that the green, has lecn four centuries of play. Even at that date the popularity of howls was unbounded. Before then, in the days if Edward 111. and Richard 11. it was forbidden, since through it archery suffered. Charles 11. drew up a set of rules in conjunction with a few dukes; amongst them is one that roads “Keep your tenner! aid remember lie who plays at bowls must take rubbers.” Both tire Southampton and Milton Regis Clubs boast that members laid down their bowls to go off to light the Armada. A curious relic of the pact is the custom still retained in the Southampton Club of playing for a “knighthood.” Each year a handsome silver medal is offered, and the winner becomes a “knight” and is always called “Sir So-and-so” by bis follow members. There is an ancient ceremony still practised at the initiation of the new “knight,” but this is kept as strictly secret as any Masonic rite, and the outsider can but wonder what the carefully-guarded ritual may bo.