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The Downside Ball Game is an outdoor racquet sport played by Gregorians at Downside School, Stratton-On-The-Fosse, Somerset since 1820. It bears some similarities to Fives, however it is played with a solid wooden bat rather than ones hand. ==History of the Sport== The History of the sport came about from Downside's situation at the time, as there was no room for anything else, there were fewer than sixty boys in the School throughout the 1820s. Abbot Snow, an Abbot of Downside Abbey, once said how football, 'not the tactical manoeuvring of backs and forwards, but the rough-and-tumble game of kicking how and when you could' was the favourite sport, together with 'cricket of a sort' and 'handball in the spring'. By the end of the nineteenth century it had become a part of Downside folklore that the term 'handball' was a translation of the generic `jeu de paume' and referred to a long-popular game known as 'bat and ball' that had come over with Downside from the continent, as evidenced by the very similar game being played at Ushaw College which, like Downside, had its origins at Douai in Flanders. However, extensive research by the late Dom Lucius Graham OSB has shown that, prior to the building of the present Ball Place, the only version of the game known to Gregorians was not only called 'handball' but was indeed played with the hand. Dom Lucius surmised that the wall's size, and particularly its height, which exceeded the requirements of Handball, prompted the introduction of the bat. Certainly, at the time Dom Stephen Rawlinson came as a schoolboy in 1876, both the hand and the bat varieties were in use, though the former seems to have lost favour and vanished, owing, notes a later commentator, to damage to the players' hands. In its heyday, a boy who was good at bat-and-ball 'was as much thought of as a successful cricketer', but, by the end of the nineteenth century, it, too, was losing favour on the plea that it was 'too much fag' to make the cork, worsted and leather balls. A sample of the bat, some 27 inches long with a small broadening at the business end, famous for having been used by The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) during his visit to Downside in 1932, is currently on display in the Court of Arches at Downside. The balls are never more than 1½ inches in diameter and the strokes were made with a downward sweep of the arm. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Downside Ball Game」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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