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Aunt Sally
...
... is a pub
game played very competitively in Oxfordshire and hardly at all anywhere
else. The game consists of players throwing batons at a
 wooden
skittle-like target, and goes back at least as far as the 17th Century.
It may have been introduced by Royalist soldiers during the English
Civil war when Charles set up court in Oxford. There are two 14th
century manuscripts which show a game called club 'kayles' (from the
French 'quilles' or skittles) which depict a skittles game in which one
skittle is bigger, differently shaped, and in most cases positioned so
as to be the most difficult to knock over. The throwers, in the
pictures, are about to launch a long club-like object at the skittles
underarm. Aunt Sally appears to be a development of skittles whereby
this 'kingpin' became the sole interest of the game and the other
skittles were dispensed with.
In Aunt Sally, the
single white stubby skittle, about 6 inches high and 2 and 3/4 inches in
diameter, is called the 'doll', and the six round-ended projectiles are
18 inches long, 2 inches in diameter, and are called 'sticks'. The doll
is positioned on top of a hollow rod (the 'iron') set in the ground so
that the top is two and a half feet above the ground, and each player throws
the sticks at it from behind a line
 (the 'oche') 10 yards from the
iron, the aim being to knock doll off the iron as many times as possible
with the six sticks. Sounds easy but it isn't.
Normal league play has two teams each consisting
of ten players and three legs or 'horses' are played.
A horse
consists of each member of one team having one turn of six throws,
followed by the other team each having their throws. A point is
only
counted when the stick hits the doll before the iron, so the
maximum either team can score in a horse is 60 dolls.
The
Abingdon and District Aunt Sally
fixtures run from the beginning of May through to the middle
of September, and The Fox is extremely
proud of its two house teams, one of which
has won the Premier Section title five times in the last eight years.
In addition to running
two league teams, we can host your
Aunt Sally
Party as a different night out from the office or for other social
gatherings - call us
for further details.
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