When playtime was streets ahead for children in district

FOR hundreds of years, children played in the streets of towns and villages.

However, everything changed when they became dominated by the motor car, and today you seldom see girls and boys playing in streets. It is no longer safe to do so, and there are now other indoor pursuits to occupy them.

Noisy play in the street was not always popular with adults, who would often tell kids to ‘clear off’. However, some games such as marbles (also known as taws) were played quietly. Marbles was often played in a hollow worn in the surface of an unmade street. One was placed in the centre and players would flick their marbles with their thumb to knock it out. If successful, the one that knocked the marble out won it.

Another game, Whip and Top, was played mainly by girls. The tops were a small wooden cylinder, with one end pointed and fitted with a metal stud. The whip was a stick with a length of leather lace that was wrapped around the top. The top was held upright on a flagstone with the finger of one hand and the whip smartly pulled with the other to spin it. Two, or more, would play to see whose top would spin the longest. Some tops were made with a string attached.

Hopscotch was also popular with girls. Chalk was used to mark out a numbered court in squares and a stone was thrown into one to start. Players hopped from one square to another, avoiding the one with the stone in, to reach the square at the end.

Hoops, or bools, was also once popular. Cheap ones, made from cane, were rolled along the street and kept going by tapping them along with a stick, known as a guider. More expensive bools were blacksmith-made and had a guider attached by an iron ring.

Piggy – or Tip-cat – needed a wide street, or park, for play. The piggy, or cat, was a piece of wood about five inches long and pointed at both ends. It was placed on a flat stone and the tip was struck with a stick about two feet long. When struck the piggy spun into the air and was then hit a second time to send it as far as possible. Two teams of five, or six, would play in turn. One of the in team would strike the piggy as far as possible and their captain would estimate the number of strides to where it landed. The out-team captain could then challenge the in-team to stride it, if the strider succeeded the number was added to their score but if he failed it went to the out-team. The team with the highest aggregate score won.

A game that required no paraphernalia was Rally-oh and it was played by boys and girls. The players chose a home post, such as a lamppost. One of them, the catcher, would face the post, close their eyes and count to 50 whilst the others ran off to hide. The object was to get back to the post without getting caught. On 50 the catcher shouted ‘coming ready or not’, and the search was on to catch a victim. Those that got safely to the post shouted ‘rally-oh, rally-oh 123’. The first person caught became the catcher in a new game.

Tun Bricks Coming On was another favourite. There were two teams, the in-team captain stood with his back to a tree, or post. Three, or four, others made a horse by bending down one behind the other, the first resting against the captain. The other team would leapfrog onto the horse to see how many it could support before it collapsed.

The games had many local variations but today most are now largely forgotten.