Quoits: The History of Britain's Ancient Throwing Game

Pick up a rope quoit, take aim at a wooden peg eight feet away, and you are participating in a tradition that stretches back to ancient Greece. The throwing ring is one of the oldest human games — predating writing, predating bronze, predating most of the civilisations we think of as ancient. What changed between then and now is mostly the material. The essential act — ring, target, throw — has not changed at all.

Quoits is a game that Edward III tried to ban, that Henry VIII eventually allowed, that Roman soldiers carried to Britain, and that Jaques of London has been making in its modern rope-and-wood form for over a century. It is played in English pub gardens, on Scottish clifftops, in North American backyards, and on Welsh recreation grounds — each community with its own rules, distances, and traditions, all descending from the same ancient root.

Here is the full story.

The Ancient Origins: From Greek Discus to Roman Ring

The discus — a flat, weighted disc thrown for distance — was one of the five events in the ancient Greek pentathlon, formally included in the Olympic Games from 708 BC (Encyclopaedia Britannica; Ancient Olympic Games, International Olympic Committee). The discus itself was likely descended from even earlier throwing traditions: stones hurled at targets, slabs of rock thrown in competition. The human instinct to throw something at something else is about as old as the human hand.

As the Greek tradition evolved and the Roman Empire absorbed Greek culture, the throwing disc became the throwing ring — lighter, more precise, easier to make from forged iron. Roman soldiers throughout the empire played versions of this game. When the Roman legions occupied Britain from 43 AD, they brought the game with them. Forged iron rings thrown at an iron stake hammered into the ground — the essential mechanics of quoits as it would be played in English tavern yards for the next fifteen centuries.

The evidence for Roman-era quoits in Britain comes partly from archaeological finds — forged iron rings recovered from Roman-period sites in Britain — and partly from the distribution of the game. Quoits traditions are strongest precisely in the areas of heaviest Roman settlement: northern England, the Welsh borders, and the south of Scotland. The game did not spread randomly. It followed the legions.

Medieval Quoits: Banned, Permitted, and Played Regardless

By the medieval period, quoits was a fixture of English common life. Played in tavern yards, on village greens, and on any flat stretch of ground, it was the game of labourers, soldiers, and tradesmen. Which is precisely why the authorities kept trying to stop it.

Edward III's Statute of Labourers (1361) included quoits in a list of games that common people were forbidden to play on working days. The reasoning was practical rather than moral: quoits distracted men from archery practice. In an era when the longbow was England's primary military technology, any game that kept men from the butts was a strategic liability. Quoits was particularly problematic because it required similar focus and arm strength to archery, making it a tempting substitute that didn't actually improve military readiness (Statutes of the Realm, Vol. I, 1810).

Edward IV renewed the restriction in 1477. Neither ban had much practical effect. The game was too simple, too cheap, and too embedded in tavern culture to be effectively suppressed. By the time Henry VIII addressed the question in his 1541 statute, the approach had changed: rather than attempting to ban quoits for common people, the Act listed it among games permitted for gentlemen and householders playing in their own gardens. The commoners, meanwhile, continued to play in tavern yards regardless.

Jaques of London and the Garden Quoits Tradition

Jaques of London — established in 1795, the world's oldest games maker — has been producing quoits sets for over a century. The company that standardised croquet (1851), commercialised the Staunton chess set (1849), and patented Ludo (1896 UK Patent Office) applied the same logic to quoits: take an informal, variable game and give it a consistent, well-made form that families could rely on.

The traditional quoit was a forged iron ring, heavy and precise, thrown at a clay or sand bed with an iron stake (the "hob"). This version is still played competitively in northern England and Scotland under regional rules — different counties maintain different pitching distances, bed compositions, and scoring systems. It is a serious game in those communities, not a casual one.

The garden quoit — lighter rope rings on a portable wooden board — is the Jaques contribution to the game's evolution. By replacing iron rings with natural rope and clay beds with a scored wooden base, Jaques made quoits playable on any flat surface, by any age, without specialist equipment or preparation. The Garden Quoits Set with Bag (£22.88) and the Original Quoits Set (£24.89) carry that tradition directly — unbleached rope quoits, solid wood base, numbered scoring pegs.

Quoits Travels: America, the Commonwealth, and Horseshoes

When British settlers emigrated to North America in the 17th and 18th centuries, quoits came with them. The game established itself quickly in the colonies — George Washington reportedly played quoits at Valley Forge, and the game was a fixture of American frontier life throughout the 18th century. As settlers moved west and iron quoits were harder to obtain, they substituted what was available: horseshoes. This substitution — a horseshoe thrown at an iron stake in the ground — became the American game of horseshoe pitching, now played by an estimated 40 million Americans (National Horseshoe Pitchers Association).

The connection matters: horseshoe pitching is not a separate invention. It is quoits with different equipment, evolved on a different continent from the same British root. The same basic mechanics — throwing a ring or ring-shaped object at a target stake — transferred intact.

In the Commonwealth, quoits traditions persist independently. Scottish quoits uses a different ring size and throwing style from the English game. Welsh quoits has its own regional rules. The game scattered with British emigration and then evolved in its new contexts, producing a family of related games that all trace back to the Roman rings that arrived in Britain in 43 AD.

Why Quoits Has Never Quite Gone Away

In a culture that generates new games constantly, quoits has survived without reinvention. The Northern Quoits Association still runs competitive leagues in England. Pub gardens across Britain still have quoits boards mounted to the wall or stored behind the bar. Scotland's quoits associations maintain formal competitions. And in every summer garden, someone finds a rope quoits set in the shed and teaches a child a game their grandparents' grandparents would recognise.

The game survives because its core mechanic — throw the ring, land it on the target — is satisfying in a way that does not diminish with repetition or familiarity. The distance, the arc, the moment of contact: there is no substitute for the clean ring-on-peg that scores a ringer. It is the same satisfaction whether you are throwing a forged iron ring in a northern England competition or a rope quoit in a Surrey garden.

It also survives because it is genuinely inclusive. Unlike most competitive sports, quoits does not reward athleticism as much as it rewards accuracy and control. A child of eight and a grandparent of seventy-five can play a genuinely competitive game without modification. This is not a claim most sports can make honestly.

Frequently Asked Questions About the History of Quoits

Related Garden Games from Jaques

Quoits sits alongside a full range of traditional outdoor games in the Jaques collection. Explore our garden games range, including our Full Rounders Set (£24.89), and for indoor play, our board games collection and wooden toys range.