From the Country Life archive: The 19th century answer to Swingball

When it came to women's clothes, appearance and style were seen as more important than comfort and manoeuvrability well into the 20th century.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

As we take shade (we can but hope) from the late June sun to enjoy a bowl of strawberries and cream and watch a match or two at Wimbledon, spare a passing thought for the late Victorian tennis fan who had no means of access to the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, or their own tennis court.

Luckily for our late-19th Century forebears, a canny inventor had created a device to ensure a form of tennis for all. Designed to only require a space of 15ft, Spiropole — apologies to any child of the 1970s now having flashbacks to black eyes incurred during a game of Swingball with an overly-aggressive sibling — consisted of a vertical pole with a long piece of cord attached to the top. Tied to the end of the said cord was a tennis ball that was to be struck by opposing players with small racquets until the cord had spiralled itself completely around the pole. It was, at least, advertised as a game for not just men, but also women, which was a rarity in its time.

Other than a gentle game of quoits or croquet, women were deemed too delicate for the rough and tumble of anything more strenuous. Apparently known unfathomably as Bumblepuppy, the garden game, and a — truly terrifying for any crystal glass lovers or porcelain collectors — table top version, appear to have been advertised in the pages of Country Life from 1897 to around 1906, when they vanished as quickly from the public zeitgeist as they had appeared.

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Melanie is a freelance picture editor and writer, and the former Archive Manager at Country Life magazine. She has worked for national and international publications and publishers all her life, covering news, politics, sport, features and everything in between, making her a force to be reckoned with at pub quizzes. She lives and works in rural Ryedale, North Yorkshire, where she enjoys nothing better than tootling around God’s Own County on her bicycle, and possibly, maybe, visiting one or two of the area’s numerous fine cafes and hostelries en route.