The History Of Croquet

How many people when they go out to buy their Jaques Croquet sets pause to wonder about the origins of the game? Well for the benefit of those thoughtful souls who do let's take a look at the history of croquet.

The game of croquet as we know it today is considered a fairly late arrival on the sporting scene. However it can trace its ancestry back to the 14th century if not earlier. Players of those days certainly wouldn't recognise the croquet sets in use now. The game wasn't called croquet then and indeed it was played differently. It has taken a long evolutionary process to arrive at the kind of croquet sets used by today's players and the manner in which they're used to play the game.

There are at least two versions of the story of croquet's evolution and no-one knows for sure which is right. It's even possible that the true story may be an amalgam of both.

One school of thought is that it's descended from bowls as played on bowling greens. The thinking is that bowlers wanted a version of the game that could be played indoors during the winter off-season. To compensate for the much smaller playing area that was available indoors they added hoops and mallets to make the game more challenging. In doing so of course they would have created a different game altogether.

It's thought that when summer came around again the players took their new game outdoors again. France seems to have been where all this was happening and there they called the new game, "paille-maille," which translates as, "ball-mallet" in English. Not a very inspiring name, that was never actually used in the English form.

The other story is that this paille-maille didn't derive from bowls but from billiards as an outdoor version of that game. Mind you it's as hard to see a connection between croquet and billiards as it is between croquet and bowls, but it's what some believe.

The snag with the billiards story is that according to what documentary evidence exists, and it's precious little, billiards seems to have appeared about a hundred years after people are known to have been playing paille-maille. It may have happened the other way round of course with billiards developing from an indoor version of paille-maille.

The fact is we can't be sure of how all this transpired. What we do know however is that for several centuries the game of paille-maille was played though it never became really popular. The game seems to have been used by golfers in Scotland as a form of golf practice during the 16th century. Certainly when King James VI of Scotland moved south to become King James I of England in 1604 he introduced both golf and paille-maille to the English Court.

In the next century King Charles II is known to have played paille-maille in London with his courtiers at St James' Palace. About that time the name of the game became anglicised and was known as pall mall. The street nearby acquired the name of Pall Mall, which it bears to this day, no doubt derived from the English name of the game.

The name ,"croquet," first appeared in the 1830s when a French doctor devised a new variation on the pall mall theme as a way of giving his patients healthy outdoor exercise. He called it," croquet," which is a French term for a crooked stick.

The new game soon caught on in the spas in the South of France and English visitors may well have brought it to England on their return home. Even that's not certain though because there are several accounts of croquet having been brought over to England in the 1850s from Ireland. It may well be that the game came to England from France via Ireland.

At all events croquet obviously became popular in England because in 1868 the Wimbledon All England Croquet Club was founded and established standardised rules for the first time ever. In 1877 lawn tennis was introduced to the club and croquet took a bit of a knock. Tennis courts replaced most of the croquet lawns and the club adopted its new name of the "Wimbledon All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club."

Due to the takeover by lawn tennis at Wimbledon a new body was formed in 1896, the "United All-England Croquet Association," in order to try to revive interest in croquet and to form the governing body for the sport in England. It still fulfils both roles although now under the shorter name of "The Croquet Association." The supreme authority today is the "World Croquet Federation".

That brings us right up to date. Croquet is now a sport with official recognition world wide.

Author Biography:

Priory Sports is a leading UK fitness retailer and stockist of Jaques croquet sets and Supertramp trampolines. Priory Sports stock the full Jaques croquet sets and Supertramp trampolines as part of their summer range.