Ball Games
Sport & the Arts - Volume 1 : Ball Games
by Mary Ann Wingfield - Extracts from Chapter 9
Fives
Early Days
Some sort of Fives has existed since very early days and as with rackets may have derived from pelota, the early Basque wall game played with the hand; since 1857 pelota has been played with the long curved basket known as the chistera strapped to the arm. To hit a ball against a wall with the hand or with a piece of wood is instinctive to most small boys, and is the main reason why Fives grew and prospered amongst the early public schools, each school adapting the rules and court design over the years to its own character and requirements, so that at the present day there are a number of variations of the game under the names of the schools.Fives at Elvetham, Hampshire 1591
Whilst little recorded detail of the game exists in the public schools before 1825, the chapter on Fives in Joseph Strutt's The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801, states that Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was entertained at Elvetham in Hampshire by the Earl of Hertford in 1591: 'after dinner about 3 o'clock, ten of his lordship's servants, all Somersetshire men, in a square green court before her Magestie's windows, did hang up lines, squaring out the forme of a tennis-court and making a cross line in the middle; in this square they (being stript out of their dublets) played five to five with hand-ball at bord and cord as they terme it, to the great liking of her highness'. Later historians doubted Strutt's accuracy in ascribing this game to Fives, believing it to have been an improvised game of tennis. They may well be right, as the description, given originally by John Norris, fits neither game as we know it to-day, although the terms 'bord' and 'cord', which refer to the line traced across the lower part of the wall, survive in modern Fives and squash.
West Country Fives
The reference in the description to the ten Somersetshire men is interesting as a reference a few years later in the church registers at Locking, near Banwell, outside Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, in the 1630s, makes one wonder whether at that date Fives, like hurling, predominated in the West Country. Fives was played in the West Country against the walls of inns and more frequently, church towers, where the glaziers were often called in, it seems, to repair the stained glass windows. The entry in the 1635 Locking register reads: '17 pence spent when I was called to Wells to to prevent those that played Fives in the churchyard 8th January'. In 1754, the Bishop of Bath and Wells ordered the game of Fives should cease to be played against church towers as undoubtedly over one hundred years glaziers' bills were beginning to be felt with some pain by the exchequer.
Early Fives in London and the Boxing Connection
There is evidence that the game was in full swing in London as early as 1742, from an advertisement in the Daily Advertiser of 28th October of that year which states that Mr Thomas Higginson kept a Fives court at the bottom of St.Martin's Street on the left hand in Leicester Fields: 'it's for Fives playing only either with Rackets, Ball or hand Fives at 2d., 3d. or 4d. a game'. The court at St Martin's Street had been adapted for tennis as well as Fives, as an advertisement of 23rd February makes clear; 'and the other Tennis court is in St. Martin's Street next door to the stable yard near Hedge Lane, Leicester Fields. It's built like the Tennis courts at Oxford and Cambridge. It's made out of the Fives court into a carre Tennis court. Tennis at 8d. or 12d. for a four game set, note any gentleman may speak either court for their own play for any day or hour or Fives playing in either court with Tennis and other balls'. The business-like proprietors of public courts were quick to spot changes of fashion in the current popular games and to adapt their courts accordingly. From these advertisements it is clear that the tide of fashion for single walled Fives was already on the ebb. The resourceful Mr Higginson, therefore, turned his attention to boxing as a suitable alternative, and ran these courts until his death in 1783. The floor of the Fives court at the Minerva Rooms, St Martin's Street, Leicester Fields was originally used as the venue for sparring contests and exhibitions. Later the coloured boxer, Bill Richmond (1763-1828), known as 'the black terror', suggested to Thomas Cribb (1781-1848), the boxing champion of England at that time, that the introduction of a raised stage might improve matters so far as the viewing and paying public was concerned. Richmond was also the first pugilist to spar at the Fives court stripped to the waist 'in order the spectators might derive a more competent idea upon the art of Boxing'.
Prison Fives and the Decline of One-wall Fives
In 1780, from a report by John Howard on the 'State of the Prisons in England and Wales', we find that Fives was being played at the Fleet and the King's Bench prisons, and later in 1812 James Neild recorded: 'part of the ground next the wall is appropriated for playing Rackets and Fives'. In 1832, Pierce Egan published his Book of Sport and Mirror of Life in periodic issues at threepence each. Issue XV on Rackets included William Hazlitt's magnificent obituary to the champion Fives player, John Cavanagh, who died in January 1810: 'When a person dies whio does anything better than anyone else in the world which so many others are trying to do well, it leaves a gap in society. It is not likely that anyone will now see the game of Fives played in its perfection for many years to come - for Cavanagh is dead, and has not left his peer behind him.' Cavanagh was an Irishman by birth and a house painter by profession, and later on in his tribute to him, Hazlitt quotes an amusing story: 'He had once layed aside his working dress and walked up in his smartest clothes to the 'Rosemary Branch' to have an afternoon's pleasure. A person accosted him and asked him if he would have a game. So they agreed to play for half a crown a game and a bottle of cider.' Needless to say Cavanagh's opponent could not take a game from the champion, but not recognising him, perserved until the inevitable conclusion was reached and Cavanagh's identity revealed. According to Hazlitt, the opponent was not amused, but it is to be hoped that his sporting qualities were revived by cider. The game of single-walled Fives suffered a catastrophic decline shortly after, if not as a direct result of Cavanagh's death, but it survived in the public schools.
Ball Games by Mary Ann Wingfield
Created 21st June 2001
efa@etonfives.co.uk