‘Bolton Against All England for a Cool Hundred’: Crown Green Bowls in South Lancashire, 1787–1914

Abstract

This article traces the development of crown green bowls and underlines the class-based history of the game from private subscription bowling greens, patronized by the emerging commercial and industrial elite, through its expansion across the nineteenth century with limited liability company provision and the growth of municipal greens, and into the early twentieth century as a working-class popular pub sport, greatly encouraged by entrepreneurial pub landlords. It also seeks to understand how Lancashire became the centre of professional crown green bowling in the late nineteenth century with professional players receiving a share of the gate money, betting on their own chances and in some cases receiving commission on the betting, again with pub landlords playing an important role as promoters and stakeholders. Using Bolton and district as a case study, it seeks to add to the nearly non-existent literature on crown green bowls and records how the sport was increasingly underpinned by the commercial interests of the petty bourgeoisie, especially those in the drinks trade and gambling, who understood the profit-making potential of sport. Again, this underlines the rich endemic local cultural sporting practices of Bolton and south Lancashire across the nineteenth century and into the twentieth.