Bottle kicking at Hallaton

 

I have written previously about several surviving ancient village or town games played on religious feasts as in the instances of the Haxey Hood at Epiphany and the Shrove Tuesday traditions of football matches at Atherstone, Ashbourne and Alnwick, as well as that of the Corfe Marblers in Dorset - and, of course, the Olney pancake race.

Now the curious serendipity of the internet led me just the other week, whilst researching an entirely different subject, to another of these games, and one of which I was unaware. That is the bottle kicking at Hallaton in south-east Leicestershire. It is held each year on Easter Monday. This is another rough and tumble match with another, neighbouring village, Medbourne ( which always has to lose the game ), and with the partial involvement of a third community. The game is first recorded in the 1770s but is doubtless much older on the basis of its similarities to other such events, not least the lack of rules.

Wikipedia has an account of the game and its particular, and quite complicated traditions at Bottle-kicking

Such games were doubtless a means in the middle ages and succeeding centuries ( whatever their possible origins ) for the young men and boys of a village to burn off pent up energy at the time of a religious celebration or to have an opportunity for being boisterous before the return to work, as at Haxey. A much more recent, and controlled, version was the sponsoring of football and rugby clubs by churches as well as employers in the nineteenth century to keep young men from idleness and drinking by playing or watching team sports.