The Yorkshire Dalesman Magazine (September Issue) - Quoits

Photography by George Hutton

Words by Cameron Hill

QUOITS 

People have been throwing quoits at pins for a disputed amount of time. 

Some claim it’s an ancient game, stretching back to the Greeks and their discuses. Some hold that it’s a French import, brought home by wandering longbowmen. Others say quoits were used for hunting, or as weapons. They would hurt. Or maybe the game just grew from people throwing horseshoes at a stick mid-shift. 

However it began, it is embedded deep in the soil here, part of the texture of the North since at least the late twelfth century, when its reputation for drinking and relaxing led to attempts to stamp it out. It is a reputation that holds true to this day. 

Rather than fading, the sport grew in step with industry. Finish at the plant, wander down to the pitch, have a pint (quoits pitches are nearly always next to a pub), and play through a soft focus hazy summer evening. Some theories claim the quoits themselves were made from left over scrap metal from the furnaces, the sport sculpted from the work. 

There are few clear facts about quoits out there on the internet. It is a sport still mostly here in the real world, a few people gathering around these few remaining pitches as the mines have closed and the work has changed and the countryside has changed and quoits have continued to be thrown, collected, thrown, collected. A fragile, living rhythm that has been going on here for hundreds of years, still going, now.