A bowls ball, tennis ball and gaming pieces

These four items were found in a stone-lined pit containing Elizabethan and early 17th-century domestic rubbish, excavated in Trichay Street in 1972-3. The tennis ball has a leather covering and is densely packed with moss; it was presumably used in real tennis. The bowls ball is a lathe-turned object with flattened sides; it is similar to one found at Coppergate, York, in a context of c.1300.

The occupants of this household were evidently pleasure-seekers: other finds in the pit included distilling equipment, drinking glasses, many stoneware drinking pots and a coin forger's dies.

Acknowledgments: RAM Museum