Rose & Crown, Balderton, Newark, Nottinghamshire

One of the great fascinations for me with the game of Skittles is the way that players in different parts of the country (and indeed the world!) have developed so many, sometimes radically different versions of what is essentially the same 9-pin, 3-ball game. This wide variety includes numerous subtly different variations on the kind of alley skittles found in and around the West Country, half a dozen or more versions of Table Skittles, and the similar but very different 'skittling' of Aunt Sally in the Oxfordshire area. Unlike practically every competitive sport and game played at league level in this country, there really is no single version of Skittles that we might regard as being the standard for the game.

In my own part of the country, the East Midlands, they play a type of skittles that's very different to that found anywhere else in the country. In fact it can be a bit of a head-scratcher to those more familiar with the 'West Country' game where the balls are rolled smoothly, if not always sedately down the alley rather than the Dambuster-style 'full toss' of the Midlands game! Not only is Long Alley Skittles unique to the area, it's arguably the traditional pub game of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire (and to a lesser extent Leicestershire where the game shares equal billing with a unique local Table Skittles tradition). Other games such as Darts, Pool, even Dominoes, may be more widely played in the region, but only Long Alley Skittles can lay claim to being unique to the regions pubs and clubs.

The Newark area is not only the north-eastern limit of this East Midlands skittles tradition, but also represents one of the current geographical limits of skittles as a competitive pub game in Britain. This was not always the case. A version of Table Skittles was played east of this point in Norfolk, and probably throughout much of Lincolnshire until relatively recently, and alley skittles in various forms was popular just about everywhere as both a pub and outdoor event game, even as far north as Scotland where a historic alley still survives at Edinburgh's famous Sheep Heid Inn. Quite why one of the most popular and widespread traditional games still played at the pub has its modern-day northern limit in the Midlands is not at all clear.

So the Newark & District Long Alley Skittles League is something of an outlier to Britains surviving skittles tradition. It's also one of many pub games leagues that seem happy to hide their light under a bushel. No online presence (other than a short-lived blog by a local team member), little in the way of fixture lists in the pubs I've visited, and in common with just about everywhere nowadays, the declining local newsprint seem to have stopped reporting on the league. Hence it can be difficult to get a handle on just how healthy the Newark league might be in the 21st century. As is so often the case with traditional pub games, the only way to get a real insight into the game is to go for a pint or two at one of the pubs where Long Alley is still played. Not exactly an onerous task for the most part, and certainly not so at the Rose & Crown in the nearby village of Balderton.

The Rose & Crown has been on my (quite long) shortlist of pubs to visit in the Newark area for a good few years now. An increasingly rare example of an entirely wet-led village local located on the edge of Newarks suburban sprawl. Perhaps a little too far to walk to from the town centre, but a good convenient stop for travellers on the nearby A1 if it's just a pint you're after, not a dining experience. It's a skittles pub of course, and if the condition of the alley at the rear of the pub is anything to go by, the game appears to be in good health. Well maintained, and clearly still regarded by the owners as an important asset to the main business of the pub.

As you can see from these photos, the skittle alley is entirely covered, not always the case in the Newark area where the tradition of outdoor skittling endures at one or two venues. A timber and pitch-roof shed that's gradually being swallowed by creeping Ivy, and now effectively an annexe to the main pub accessed from a rear hallway. In common with most covered alleys, this one doubles as a space for functions when not in use for its primary function. When I visited the pub in October, the Summer skittles season was all-but over, although the home team were in fact playing that evening, possibly a mop-up game postponed from earlier in the year.

In Long Alley Skittles, the pins are set on a metal frame in the familiar diamond formation (left). This helps the surface of the alley withstand the repeated impact of heavy wooden balls which are launched in such a way as to clear a lightweight metal sheet set a few feet in front of the leading pin. If the ball falls short and hits this sheet it's adjudged to be a foul throw. The frame at the Rose & Crown is set into a larger wooden frame rather than direct into the concrete floor, and you can see in the image above just how much damage has been inflicted over the course of successive seasons.

The Woolcomber, Kettering, Northamptonshire

You wait and you wait for a Kettering pub to come along...

I guess this short post could be seen as a companion piece to the one I posted recently on the Stirrup Cup in (very) nearby Barton Seagrave, indeed I was pretty keen to compare these two very similar late 20th century pubs. Since the Leather Crafstman pub closed and was subsequently demolished in 2017, The Woolcomber finds itself as the last surviving pub on the Ise Lodge Estate. Leather Craftsman aside, Ketterings estate pubs have faired better than most in recent years. Very few have in fact closed, and most have seen significant investment from their pubco owners in recent years. These Kettering pubs seem to be valued by both owners and locals alike, and it probably helps their cause that the areas they serve are not especially over-pubbed.

Just a decade separates the construction of the Stirrup Cup and the Woolcomber, both of which opened at a time when utilitarian estate pubs like these were springing up all over the place, built to serve the needs of the rapid growth in post-war housing. By happenchance, both these pubs have also received a fairly recent refurbishment after many years of neglect. So far, so similar...

By the time the Woolcomber was built in 1975, most of the smaller regional brewers had fallen prey to national concerns, and it's not entirely clear to me who built the pub. By the early 90's it was listed in a local CAMRA pub guide as serving Home Bitter, but at this time Nottinghams Home Ales were firmly in the hands of the huge Scottish & Newcastle conglomerate. Unlikely as it may seem given the pubs distance from the brewerys base to the north of Nottingham, it's quite likely that Home Ales did indeed commission the Woolcomber. Because alongside local rivals Hardys & Hansons, and to a lesser extent Everards of Leicester, it was mostly regional brewers that were actively building new pubs at this time, and Home Ales reach extended throughout the East Midlands, and certainly as far as Northamptonshire.

Often these new-build pubs were nothing much to look at from the outside at least, and certainly by the standards of the opulent town-centre Victorian and Edwardian boozers that survived the war years. Indeed the Woolcomber was a classic 70's 'flat-roof' construction, sitting on a large car park in view of the other essential amenities of the day, the Chippy, Newsagent, and a small local Supermarket. The current appearance of the pub has been greatly enhanced by the addition of weatherboarding, a good move I think!

Multi-room pubs were the norm back then, and the Woolcomer, in common with the Stirrup Cup, was built as a traditional 'bar and lounge' pub. The scourge of knocking pubs through into one, large, easy to manage room, was just taking hold in the 70's, becoming an unfortunate epidemic in the 80's. Though the Woolcomber retained its original two-room layout throughout this period, sadly during the 2016 refurbishment it was decided to remove the wall that divided the bar and lounge. So the Woolcomber is a single room pub now, but with two quite distinct areas. This is perhaps the only major difference between the Woolcomber and its near-neighbour the Stirrup Cup which retains a separate bar and lounge.

The bar area to the front of the pub (above) is clearly the social heart of the pub, and now fulfils the need that all suburban pubs like the Woolcomber have, for comfortable dining as opposed to the purely social drinking that dominated estate pubs like this in years gone by. It's here that the recent refurbishment of the pub has had the most impact, turning what was a rapidly declining and largely unloved local boozer into an attractive and comfortable dining pub fit for the 21st century.

The slightly smaller space toward the rear of the pub is the games area, featuring a Dartboard, Pool Table, and the local speciality, a well-maintained Northamptonshire Skittles Table. This one is a W T Black & Son model, itself only recently refurbished. The stencilled serial numbers underneath suggest the table was constructed in 1972 (below), so it's quite possible that this skittles table has been at the Woolcomber from the time the pub opened back in the 70's.

Unsurprisingly for a pub in a residential area like this, there's no shortage of television screens dotted about the place. It's hard to imagine how a pub like the Woolcomber would survive without televised sport to draw the crowds in, and the same could be said for the pubs traditional games, all of which see regular service in local leagues. The Skittles teams are currently playing on Monday nights in the Kettering, Burton Latimer & District Skittles Winter League.