ABSTRACT
The aim of the chapter is to review the sport of ‘handball’ as conducted in Britain between 1700 and 1900. Traditional handball games could be played against a tall wall, with teams of players, one or more on each side, so these often developed in churchyards, with the outer church walls providing an excellent facility, though this came with consequent damage to stained-glass windows. There was a development of the handball games called ‘fives’ in the leading public schools, but, despite fives being adopted and developed as an elitist public school sport, there is enough evidence to suggest that virtually identical handball games were popular outside of these schools well before and during the development of fives. Crucially, there are parallels with the development of Association football in that both games developed concurrently inside and outside educational settings. Public schools had different variants of football – those who favoured a handling game as opposed to those who followed a kicking game – which had a significant input into the later rules of Association football and Rugby Union. However, we know that at the same time there were almost identical games being played amongst the wider population.
