British children have always played. Before television. Before radio. Before electricity. Before the industrial revolution that moved families from countryside to city. The specific games have changed across the centuries. The underlying need, and the kinds of play that meet it, have not. This is the history of what British children played before screens existed, and it turns out to be a remarkably accurate description of what developmental researchers now say they need most.
It is also, in large part, the history of Jaques of London, the oldest games and toys manufacturer in the world, founded in 1795, whose products have been at the centre of British play for more than two centuries.
Before the Screen: What British Children Actually Did
The question of what British children did before screens is not as remote as it might seem. Television became widely available in British homes in the 1950s. There are grandparents alive today who grew up in a screenless household. Their own parents grew up before radio was common. Three generations back from a child alive today takes you to a world in which the screen did not exist in any form, and children played.
What they played falls into categories that are instantly recognisable and entirely consistent with what developmental researchers now recommend. They played outdoors, in unstructured ways, for significant portions of each day. They played games with rules, cards, board games, garden games, with family members across different age groups. They played imaginatively with simple objects. They built things. They competed in physical activities. They were, in developmental terms, doing almost exactly what the WHO and CMO guidelines now specify. Not because they knew about developmental guidelines, but because this was simply what childhood looked like when screens were not available to fill it.
The guidance that doctors and researchers give parents in 2026 about what children need, is, almost word for word, a description of what British children did as a matter of course for centuries before screens existed.
Play England, historical play researchVictorian Play: When Modern Childhood Began
The Victorian era is the most relevant historical period for understanding modern British play, because it was the period in which the commercial toy and games industry began in earnest, and because Jaques of London was at the centre of it.
Victorian middle-class children played with a remarkably consistent set of toys and games: spinning tops, marbles, skipping ropes, hoops, and simple wooden toys for younger children. Board games, card games, and parlour games for family evenings. Outdoor games, croquet, lawn tennis, badminton, and quoits, for the garden and the country house lawn. Books. Drawing and painting. Simple construction with wooden blocks.
The common thread across all of these is that they require the child to be active. None of them provide stimulation independently. All of them require the child to bring the engagement, the imagination, or the physical effort. Victorian children were not more virtuous or more disciplined than children today. They were simply in an environment where the toys available required them to play, rather than an environment where toys and screens played for them.
The V&A Museum of Childhood collection documents British children's toys from the Victorian era through the twentieth century. The collection shows a consistent pattern: before the mid-twentieth century, the overwhelming majority of children's toys were open-ended, physical, and required active engagement. The shift to battery-powered, screen-integrated, and passively stimulating toys is a phenomenon of the last fifty years, and the latest in a series of disruptions that have each been followed by a reassertion of the developmental value of physical play.
The Games That Have Survived
The most striking thing about the games British children played before screens is how many of them are still available, still played, and still exactly what children need. The survival rate of truly good games is extraordinary. Not because people are sentimental, but because good games work across generations and the reasons they work do not change.
Croquet was introduced commercially by Jaques of London in 1851. It is played today at garden parties, in competitive clubs, and at Wimbledon. The rules and equipment specifications that Jaques established in the 1850s and 1860s are the same ones used at international championship level today. A game Victorian families played for a reason that had nothing to do with technology is now being actively recommended by NHS guidance as one of the most effective ways to get families outside and away from screens together.
Chess, in a form recognisable to modern players, has been played for over 1,500 years. The Staunton piece design that Jaques of London created in 1849 is the international competition standard. The game that medieval scholars played for mental exercise is now the game that developmental researchers recommend for building executive function, spatial reasoning, and the emotional resilience that screens erode. The game has not changed. The reasons to play it have not changed. What has changed is the context that makes those reasons urgent.
Skittles is one of Britain's oldest documented games, with records going back to medieval times. The Jaques of London Wooden Number Skittles is the direct descendant of the game played in British pub gardens and village greens for centuries. Rolling a ball, watching things fall, resetting, going again. The cause-and-effect loop that makes this satisfying to a three-year-old in 2026 is the same loop that made it satisfying to a three-year-old in 1826.
Quoits has been played in Britain since the medieval period. Jaques of London Quoits is a direct continuation of a game that British families have played outdoors for over 600 years. The throwing skill, the competitive structure, the way it sustains engagement across different ages and abilities, all of this is unchanged and unchangeable, because it is built into the game itself.
What the History Tells Us
The history of British children's play before screens tells us something important and often missed in the screen-free conversation: the toys and games that developmental researchers now recommend are not modern inventions. They are not the product of evidence-based design in response to a contemporary problem. They are the games that British children played for centuries before anyone thought to study child development formally, and they have survived not because of nostalgia but because they work.
The screen is the anomaly. The wooden toy, the outdoor game, the strategy game played at the kitchen table, these are the baseline of British childhood, interrupted by screens for less than a century. The screen-free movement is not a new idea. It is a return to something that functioned well for generations and was briefly displaced by something that turned out to be less good for children than the thing it replaced.
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Croquet: 170 years and still the best garden gameInvented by Jaques of London in 1851. Played by Victorian families for the same reasons families play it today: it gives everyone a reason to be outside together, competing on equal terms, without a screen. Shop Croquet Sets
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Chess: 1,500 years of building better mindsStandardised for Britain by Jaques in 1849. The game that medieval scholars played for mental exercise is the same game developmental researchers now recommend for executive function and emotional resilience. Shop Chess Sets
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Skittles: medieval Britain's favourite outdoor gameOne of Britain's oldest documented games. The cause-and-effect satisfaction of rolling a ball and watching things fall has not changed in 600 years because it does not need to. Shop Skittles
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Quoits: six centuries of outdoor skill playPlayed in British pub gardens and village greens since the medieval period. The throwing skill, the competitive structure, the outdoor engagement, unchanged and unchangeable because they are built into the game. Shop Quoits
The screen is less than a century old. The games that doctors now recommend as alternatives to it are, most of them, centuries old. The history of British play is the evidence that they work.
The Games British Children Have Always Played
Croquet since 1851. Chess standardised in 1849. Skittles since medieval times. Still made. Still needed. Still screen-free.
Shop Jaques of LondonFrequently Asked Questions
What did British children play before screens?
Before screens, British children played outdoors in unstructured ways for significant portions of each day, played rule-based games with family members of different ages (cards, board games, garden games), played imaginatively with simple physical objects, built things, and competed in physical activities. This pattern remained broadly consistent from medieval times through to the mid-twentieth century, when television began to displace it.
When did screens start replacing traditional play?
Television became widely available in British homes during the 1950s. By the 1970s and 1980s, it was the primary leisure activity for most British families. Video games arrived in the 1980s. The internet and smartphones arrived in the 1990s and 2000s. The displacement of physical, outdoor, and social play by screens has been a phenomenon primarily of the last sixty to seventy years, against a background of centuries of physical play.
Are traditional games better for children than modern ones?
Traditional games have survived because they work across generations, requiring no technology and producing the kind of physical, social, and strategic engagement that developmental research consistently identifies as most valuable. This does not mean modern games are without value. It means the traditional games have been tested at extraordinary scale and duration and have consistently proved their worth. The screen-free movement is largely a return to this tradition.
How old is Jaques of London?
Jaques of London was founded in 1795, making it 230 years old and the oldest surviving sports and games manufacturer in the world. The company commercialised croquet in 1851, designed the Staunton chess piece in 1849, and introduced Ludo to Britain in the late nineteenth century. It has been making the toys and games that constitute the screen-free alternative, before the concept of screen-free existed as anything other than the normal state of affairs, for the entirety of its existence.
The Games British Children Have Always Needed. Still Made. Still Here.
Jaques of London. Founded 1795. Making the games that British children played before screens, for the children who need them most now. Free delivery on orders over £60.
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