I'd especially like to know about any regional pub games, both indoor and outdoor.
Here goes. You'll see how rough it is.
Like many things about pubs, games were regional. Even something as simple as darts.
Darts
I’ve mentioned darts, so let’s start there. In Newark, a doubles board was common. It’s like a standard board, but without the treble ring.
In the East End, I drank in a few pubs that had a fives board. The sections were larger and the only numbers were 5, 10, 15 and 20. It had both a double and a treble ring.
The Manchester board was trickiest to play. Smaller in size and with a tiny double and no treble, it was made extra difficult by having most of the numbers in different positions.
I played darts a fair bit in pubs. Well, mostly in pubs.
Cards
The classic pub card game was cribbage. It being one of the few games being generally legal to play for small stakes. Score was kept on cribbage board, which was also used for scoring some other games, such as dominoes.
Other games were played, but were by no means as common.
Dominoes
One of the most common games to be found in pubs. Quite often in the form of fives and threes. A game played by pairs and more intellectually challenging than simple straight out. And also scored on a crib board.
Table games
By that, I mean games like billiards that are played by knocking balls around a table.
Far the most common of these games was pool. Often the pool table was in the public bar, or, in pubs with many rooms, in its own special one. In rougher pubs, they were notorious as fight starters.
Bar billiards was rarer, but could be found in the occasional pub.
I can never recall seeing a full-size snooker table in a pub. If you wanted to play snooker, you had to go to a club.
Video games
The first video games began to appear in pubs in this period. The first being tennis, which started popping up in the early years of the 1970s. Followed a couple of years later by Space Invaders and Galaxian.
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17 comments:
"In Newark, a doubles board was common. It’s like a standard board, but without the treble ring."
Fred Trueman, presenting Indoor League in professional Yorkshireman mode, makes that point to "you lot south of the Trent" here: https://youtu.be/GOlEYNlSZ44?si=Z_nwIq64tqE20MMA
There was a Manchester darts board once in the front bar of the City Arms in Manchester city centre. I was last there a few months back, but we sat in the back room and I didn't notice if it's still there.
"I can never recall seeing a full-size snooker table in a pub."
The only one I know of, and which I've played on (badly) several times, is at the Lamb in Eccles: https://pubheritage.camra.org.uk/pubs/76
There is always 'ring the bull' which is a game I have seen in a couple of pubs in North Yorkshire, such as the Craven Arms at Appletreewick and in the micropub in Clapham, North Yorkshire.
A bull's nose-ring on a length of string is swung in an arc with the aim of hooking onto a bull's horn or hook attached to the wall. The ring must stay on the hook to count as a successful throw.
Its harder than it looks at first sight.
The game that seems to be common over here in and around Herefordshire is Skittles. Surprisingly common considering the space a skittle alley requires.
Did pinball machines take up too much real estate?
Some pubs here in Ireland’t don’t do games especially pool as there are space constraints.
Oscar
Did you never get to Kent to play bat 'n trap ?
And bar skittles. On the bus going home from the boozer. A bit bouncy. Hope this works.
Darts
WE would have called the doubles board a 'Yorkshire Board', but clearly it wasn't confined to Yorkshire. The Manchester board was also known as a 'log end'. There was one in the Jolly Angler near Picadilly station. A tiny pub, it was later knocked through into one still small room. Back in the late 70's/early 80's it still had the classic Manchester layout, with the front door leading into a corridor with a serving hatchway and doors off.
On the left was the vault with the main bar, and the log end was in here. There was no room for a full size board, I think for the log end you had very small darts and threw from about 5 feet away.
On the right there was a snug and a pool room. The pool table filled the room, there was no room to play a proper shot with a full sized cue. There was a special very short cue, about 18 inches long, that you had to use for some shots, and even that could be a squeeze. Anyway in those days the Jolly Angler (Hydes) was a place once seen never forgotten.
Table games
London was where you were most likely to find bar billiards.
Holts had a few pubs in North Manchester with full size snooker tables. Huge cavernous rooms with two tables in them. I never played on them (or saw anyone else doing so) but the tables looked immaculate, which was more than could be said for the rest of the surroundings.
Shove ha'penny was common in pubs in Durham in the early 70's. There we no real ha'pennies any more so you had to use specially made tokens.
There used to be tables with screens on the top so two people could face each other and play computer games. I don't think they were very popular, they quickly became covered with empty glasses, crisp packets, ash trays and the usual detritus of pub life. On the subject of ash trays, pubs in those days were like the proverbial smoke filled rooms of Labour Party and Trade Union legend. It was unimaginable at the time that a total ban on smoking in pubs would ever be implemented.
I'm not old enough to have been pubbing in the 1970s, but I'm guessing Aunt Sally was popular. It was certainly still going strong in the Oxfordshire area in the noughties.
Table games in American taverns in the 1970s included foosball, table shuffleboard and air hockey. These are a lot less common today, especially air hockey which is pretty much extinct.
Mick,
no, sadly.
Space Invaders! I remember being taken into pubs as a kid with my Dad in the late 70's and there was a real pre and post Space Invader atmosphere.
Dominoes (5s and 3s), shove halfpenny, and the classic Shut the Box
When did the Fruit Machines come in? Not much of a game, I realize, and yet...
In suffolk in the 70s there were still a few fives dart boards around,bar skittles and definitely ring the bull in a few pubs,also there was a shove happenny league in Ipswich and outside activity included steel quoits (there were 3 leagues around the Ipswich area)now only one I think
Thankfully those abominations have kept out of Irish pubs by and large.
Oscar
Will you be covering Ireland in your upcoming book keg?
Oscar
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