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OUTSIDE OF WORK W e delve into some of the more esoteric activities that our members get up to (or so they claim on their work profiles). This month Fiona Barnes tells all about Eton Fives.
How did I get into it? I started playing Eton Fives while still at school. My brothers both played at Shrewsbury School and my father ran the local club and so I joined them. And I loved it so much that I’ve been playing ever since! The club is now run by my older brother. My younger brother still plays too, but he has managed to escape from Shrewsbury and now plays mostly for the Windsor and Eton Club. What is fives? Most cultures in the world have invented games that involve hitting a ball against a wall with your hands. Fives is part of a family of handball sports that includes American Handball, Irish Handball, and the various Basque games, Pelota Vasca. In the Middle Ages, peasants played a game where a ball was hit against the walls of a chapel. These games were called ‘Fives’. Although the exact etymology is uncertain, it is most likely referring to the fingers on a hand as a ‘bunch of fives’. There are several versions of Fives such as Rugby Fives and Winchester Fives, as well as Eton Fives.
Eton Fives started, as the name might suggest, at Eton College, where the boys played their handball game up against the side of the school chapel. It is only played as “doubles”. Players wear padded leather gloves, since the ball (which is slightly large than a golf-ball and made of rubber and cork) is quite hard. In the UK, most Eton Fives clubs are concentrated in the South East, generally playing on courts at various schools, but there are also courts at Westway Sports Centre (under the A40 in West London) and a handful in other more or less surprising places (Provence, Switzerland, Brazil, Malaysia, Darjeeling, Australia et al). It is particularly popular in Nigeria.
The Origins of the Court The shape of the current court derives from one particular bay on the side of the chapel at Eton College (a bay being the area between the buttresses supporting the chapel walls). Most bays only required simple rules, but the bay at the foot of the chapel steps was different: the steps' handrail formed a hazard (seen on the left in the photo of the court). Furthermore, a landing between the two flights of steps extended the playing area. By comparing the two images above, one can see that:
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