Pitmen did not just work in the rough and tumble of industrial Durham - they competed for cash and a crack at local fame too. Widely acclaimed writer Harry Pearson pulls us back to the 1920s, when the masses turned out to watch men with vinegar-soaked fists compete with a ball in the backyard of a public house.
In Durham Road, Sacriston on the 30 July, 1921, over 2000 spectators paid sixpence each to watch one of the most eagerly anticipated contests of the sporting year. The gate receipts were a record, surpassing those taken at another celebrated encounter in Spennymoor 26 years earlier. That event had drawn in 3,000 paying fans, with thousands more watching for free from rooftops and railway embankments. For weeks before the Sacriston match the chatter about it had built in the pubs and clubs of the Durham coal fields. The champion had held his title for fifteen years. He was nudging towards the midpoint of his fourth decade, yet still he appeared invincible. The challenger was younger and stronger, but lacked the craft and guile of the veteran. The odds bobbed up and down before settling on the champion at 5 to 4. Ferocious illegal betting gobbled up pitmen’s pay packets from West Wylam to Blackhall, Waterhouses to Seaham Harbour. The two contestants had trained feverishly for months, dancing around the back alleys of south Durham, feet and hands flying to the pounding rhythm of their game, for hour upon hour, they skipped and swang, until sweat filled their boots, their arms ached and their hands stung. At nights they refuelled on beef steaks provided by their bookmaker backers and sat with their fists in jars of pickling vinegar to toughen the skin. The world championship was on the line, but that was a tiny part of what motivated them. In wealthier parts of England sport might be played purely for glory, but here in the coalfields the desire for greatness was driven by money. In Sacriston the winner would take home £400 plus a slice of the attendance money and a small fortune in side wagers. A coal miner earned a little over £4 a week. A single big victory could change a life forever.
The match would start at 1pm. In the nearby pub yard the homing pigeons that would carry the result to pit villages and towns across the region cooed and fluttered. In the enclosure that flanked the arena, spectators, swigged from flasks and jostled for position. In their excitement over the coming barney men (in the words of the Northern Weekly Gazette) “danced around like a woman who has just pounded her finger with a tack hammer”. They held up cash and called out odds, inviting others to challenge their expertise. Stakeholders gathered up the ad hoc bets. The clamour rose and then broke into a roar as the two contestants strode into the arena. Both men were famous local celebrities, pitmen heroes.
The challenger came from West Auckland, home of the winners of the first football world cup. His name was Thomas Gill, but like all men named Tommy in County Durham, he was better known as “Tucker”. Gill was not his real surname, but a nom de guerre. He was actually Tom Wilson, an amateur footballer of national renown. Broad shouldered, with cupped ears, a broken nose and crinkly hair, Wilson had just won the FA Amateur with Bishop Auckland, a defender in the side that beat Swindon Victoria 4-2 in front of a crowd over 20,000 at Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough.
The champion was a notable footballer, too. Born just down the road in Edmondsley, Jackie Mordue had played close to 300 games for Sunderland. Part of a legendary forward line that also included Charlie Buchan and Francis Cuggy, he had won a League title with the Rokermen in 1911/12 and played for England twice. Now, though he was nearly 35, he still played top flight football with Middlesbrough. If there were signs of physical decline they were marginal, though those with a nose for such things noted that Mordue, who had struck home 24 penalties on the trot for Sunderland, had missed the first spot kick of his professional career the previous season.
Mordue and Gill were noted footballers, but the crowd that had assembled behind the Robin Hood Inn had not come to watch a game of head tennis, or 3-and-in. They had come to see a game that, from the late-Victorian era until the mid-1930s, would be one of the most popular in the Durham coalfields – fives.
Sometimes called handball, the origins of the game of fives are obscure. Joseph Strutt, the great Georgian chronicler of English sports and pastimes, makes only passing mention of it. His description of handball, or jeu de paume played in Medieval France and Tudor England suggests lawn tennis in which hands were used instead of racquets. The game we know today, which looks more like squash without racquets, gained status, formal rules and popularity in the 1850s when three different versions of it developed at the elite public schools of Eton, Winchester and Rugby. It was a version close to that played in Rugby School (alma mater of William Webb-Ellis and Tom Brown), that took hold in County Durham, though whether it had developed entirely separately, or trickled down from Durham University (where it was played with enthusiasm) into working class life as codified rugby and to some extent football, had is hard to say. What we can be certain of is that by the 1870s big money matches were being played all across County Durham at public house “ball alleys” such as the one at the Robin Hood Inn. Vast crowds flocked to venues such as The North-Eastern Ball Alley in Spennymoor (where the great 1895 doubles match pitting Bessford and Dolphin against Boustrad and Richardson had been played), the New Ball Alley in Jarrow and the Tudhoe Park Ball Alley. Here, as veteran North East sportswriter Mike Amos has written, “Thousands watched and thousands were won – and lost”. There were hundreds of other less celebrated ball alleys too – The Sunbeam Grounds in Crook, The Bee Hive Ball Alley, Willington, The Hyde Park Alley, Merrington, The Blind Lane Ball Alley, Silksworth, the Albion Recreation Grounds, Shildon. There were ball alleys as far south as the Tees and north of the Tyne at Seaton Delavel. Most were attached to pubs, but later ball alleys were incorporated into newly built social clubs. The Mordues (for Jackie was not the only champion fives player in his clan, as we shall see) often played at the one attached to the “The Big Club” in Horden, and high stakes contests also took place at New Herrington Club, Trimdon Colliery Club and The Victoria Club in Murton.
Like football, the game’s popularity owed much to the fact that it was simple and cheap. All that is needed for a game of fives is a small rubber ball and a wall. While the top players all learned their craft playing for pennies on cobbled streets against the gable ends of terraced houses, the high-stake ball alleys were more sophisticated. They featured a large wall made smooth with a thick coat of plaster. A line was painted around three feet above the floor and a level concrete playing surface stretched out from the wall for at least twenty yards. Despite the best efforts of their keepers the floors were often pitted and potholed and when it rained top players were experts at plopping the ball into puddles. Whatever the state of the wall and the floor, the rules were the same. The players took turns striking the ball with their hand – in the public schools the players wore gloves, in Durham they didn’t, hence the vinegar soakings - against the wall and above the line. The first player who failed either to hit the ball before it had bounced twice, or hit the wall below the line conceded the point, or “chalk”. Matches like the one in Sacriston were generally played 33-up, the first player to reach that tally was the winner. In a fives match between two or four skilled players each rally could last five minutes. Games frequently went on for four hours or more. They were tests of stamina, strength and skill.
At the Robin Hood Inn, Mordue and Gill stripped and rolled their shoulders. The referee, George Stones of Witton Gilbert, brought the two together to deliver last minute instructions about the length of recovery time between points (a meagre 30 seconds) and remind them that this was an all-hands match in which they could strike the ball with their left or right palm and forearm. A coin was flipped for first service. Both men took up their positions. The vast crowd fell silent and then, with Stones’ cry of “Chalk on, lads!” the game began in a furore of excitement.
A pattern quickly emerged. The younger, stronger Gill hammered the ball as hard as he could aiming high up the wall so that the ball flew to the back to the court. Mordue was an expert at playing close to the wall, outwitting his opponent with deftly angled, softly struck shots. He was like a boxer who does his most punishing work on the inside, but now Gill was forcing him to go at it from distance and Mordue didn’t like it. Suddenly, the invincible Jackie looked older and oddly vulnerable. Those who had followed his career since he was a youngster must have felt a twinge of sadness as they watched him struggle. In his early years Jackie had formed a formidable doubles partnership with his brother Micky. As teenagers, they had had defeated all-comers, racking up victory after victory. Sometimes they had even played against three opponents, or using only their left-hands and still won. But then Micky had died in the bloody carnage of Gallipoli and since then Jackie had played alone. And now here he was, battling hard, but increasingly looking like his shoes were filled with lead and his once powerful legs with treacle. The challenger powered the ball with force and accuracy. The great Jackie Mordue wilted before the onslaught. It wasn’t even close. Tucker Gill took it 33 to 16. His backers from Bishop Auckland made a fortune.
The great champion’s career was over. The Mordue family’s battles with Gill were not. Jackie Mordue had two nephews, Billy and Tommy (inevitably nicknamed Tucker). Both shared their uncle’s skills on the football field (they played for Hartlepools United amongst others) and in the ball alley. Billy Mordue tackled Tucker Gill at Sacriston’s other ball alley at The Colliery Inn in 1927. Gill triumphed again. The following year he played Tommy Mordue at the Big Club Ball Alley in Horden and beat him, too. The Mordues would not be denied. In 1930 in Horden, Tommy finally wrestled the title from Tucker Gill in front of a fractious crowd who had stormed the gate in protest at the 1 shilling entrance fee. He held it for three years, then agreed to a rematch with the now ageing former champ at The O’er the Beck Ball Alley in Wheatley Hill. The match was backed by the publican Bobby Winters, a champion billiard player whose pub boasted the newest fives wall in Durham. The younger Mordue was the 4-7 favourite and raced into an early lead. Gill, by now in his mid-thirties looked on the point of collapse (“They must have fed him on mahogany steaks” yelled a wag in the crowd). Then his trainer sent to the bar for a bottle of Scotch whisky and began rubbing it into Gill’s calves during the breaks. The effect was miraculous. The veteran was rejuvenated. He hammered the ball all around the court like his younger self and won 33-26, reclaiming the championship title. As it turned out, he would be the last man ever to hold it.
The popularity of fives had begun to dip in the late 1920s. The depression hit the Durham coalfields hard. There was no longer the money to support high stakes matches. Football and cricket had become more and more popular and there were other distractions, too. Gradually the ball alleys fell into dilapidation and disrepair. The pubs that had once supported them lasted a little longer before they too were abandoned. The Robin Hood Inn was demolished in 2017 and The Colliery Inn in 2020. Thankfully, there is one fives wall still standing in the neighbourhood. You’ll find it in the beer garden of The Langley Park Hotel (AKA The Blue Star). Though it does not have the illustrious history of some of Durham’s other ball alleys, the Langley Park Hand Ball Wall is Grade II listed, and seems destined to have the longest life of any of them.
If you enjoyed this piece you may be interested in Harry's title No Pie, No Priest: A Journey through the Folk Sports of Britain. It's available from most bookshops.
Harry Pearson is a columnist for When Saturday Comes and a regular on the magazine’s half-decent podcast. His first book The Far Corner – A Mazy Dribble through North-East Football was runner-up for the William Hill prize and has been in print for three decades. He won the MCC/Cricket Society Book of the Year award in 2011 and 2018. His most recent work, No Pie, No Priest covers Britain’s less celebrated sports from quoits to bat-and-trap via cheese-rolling and nine-pin skittles. Born just outside Middlesbrough, Harry has lived in Tynedale since 1991.
Cover photo: Sacriston Colliery by Des Kelly, with kind permission from his son Andy. No reuse without permission.
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