The courts at Geelong Grammar School

Tennis, Rackets and Other Ball Games

An extract from the book by Mike Garnett published in Australia in 1986

"The Litle handball whether it be of some softer stuffe, and used by the hand alone, or of some harder, and used with the rackette, whether by tennice play with an other, or against a wall alone, to exercise the bodie with both the handes, in every kinde of motion, that concerneth any, or all the other exercises, is generally noted, to be one of the best exercises and the greatest preservatios of health". Richard Mulcaster, London 1581.

The 1984 tourists

The Hill Club's 1982 and 1984 Continental Tours

These articles by Dale Vargas first appeared in the Eton Fives Association Annual Report 1981/82 and 1983/84

Having introduced the Art of Coarse Fives to England during the last three years, the idea was advanced at one of the Clubs apres-tournamant soirees, of letting Europe in on this innovation to the ancient game.

The teams from the centenary OE v OH match

Eton & Harrow: A Hundred Years of Fives

From The Harrovian 1985

The first Eton Fives Courts were built in 1840. Ball games had long been played in the bays between the buttresses of the Eton College Chapel but it was the particular attraction of the "doubles court", the area at the foot of the staircase to the North Door, which led to the distinctive ledges, "pepper pot" and step of the Eton Fives Court.

Tony Hughes & Gordon Campbell

This article first appeared in the Midland Times circa 1976 and has resurfaced thanks to Old Edwardian David Dallaway.

TE Manning (back row, far right) with the 1959 CLS Fives team

My Years at Cambridge 1929-1933

by T E Manning, former Master-in-Charge of Fives at City of London School

The only place so far not chronicled was the one where I spent quite a lot of time over my last three years and where I actively developed an interest which was to last for the next fifty years. Soon after my arrival in the Hostel in 1930 I heard some odd sounds below my window. Upon investigation I found an Eton Fives court and there were four dons preparing to play.

Fives in the Telegraph 1969

This clipping comes from the Daily Telegraph c.1969 and contains a rather interesting quote from then EFA Secretary Gordon Stringer!

Extract from "Boy, Tales of Childhood" by Roald Dahl

It was always a surprise to me that I was good at games. It was an even greater surprise that I was exceptionally good at two of them: one called fives, the other, squash-racquets. Fives, which many of you will know nothing about, was taken seriously at Repton and we had a dozen massive glass-roofed fives courts kept always in perfect condition.

A trip down memory lane - the EFA tour of Nigeria in 1965

As legacies of empire go, some of the odder examples are the handful of Eton Fives courts scattered around the world in places like Geelong, Darjeeling and Malaysia. The one place outside of the UK where the game has really spread successfully beyond one or two isolated locations is in Northern Nigeria, where the game was introduced by Old Cholmeleian J.S.Hogben in the late 1920s. In 1965, Old Citizen Gordon Stringer was part of an official Eton Fives Association tour to Northern Nigeria, and Gordon has kindly passed on some photographs of that historic tour as well as the tour report - written by then EFA Secretary David Guilford - which was published in the 1966 EFA Annual Review.

The entrance to Portugal Place in Cambridge

An American Handballer's view of Fives

Reproduced by kind permission of Handball, September 1983

We all know the love that the Irish have for handball, but just a hop, skip, and the Irish sea away the English pursue the joy and frustration of hitting that little white ball around the handball court.

1961 Eton College Tour of Nigeria

In January 1961, a team from Eton toured Northern Nigeria at the invitation of Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, Sarduana of Sokoto. The account below is from the February 1961 edition of the Eton College Chronicle.