Years ago, for kids everywhere in England, the turning of leaves from green to brown meant only one thing: conker season. School playgrounds would be filled with the swinging of chestnut brown conkers as children vied to attain superior conker status. I can’t say I played it much myself, but my younger brother was a huge fan. In an attempt to garner a champion conker he was forever soaking them in vinegar, or baking them in the oven where they would generally catch fire.
The game of conkers is played by threading a string through the conker and holding it up while your opponent takes a whack at it with his own conker in hopes that your conker is either smashed to smithereens or it comes off the string. The victorious conker becomes a one-er, assuming that it is its maiden game. If, say, this is its fifth winning game, the conker becomes a five-er. But wait, there’s more. If the defeated conker was also a fiver-er, then the winning conker assumes that number as well, to become a ten-er. Obviously diligent schoolyard records are not being kept, so the honour system rules!
The conker itself is the fruit of the horse chestnut which grows inside a prickly green casing and begins to fall from the trees between mid-september and mid-october. It is inedible to humans although it does appear to have been fed to horses and cattle in the past.
The first recorded conker game occurred in the Isle of Wight in 1848 and the first World Conker Championships began in Ashton Northamptonshire in 1965, where they were held until 2009, when it was moved to a larger venue to accommodate more players and spectators and then moved once again to its current location in the village of Southwick. Here, it is now an international event which raises money for charities that support the visually impaired.
In the autumn of 1917, schoolchildren were asked to sacrifice their conkers to the war effort when they were collected to extract acetone, a necessary ingredient required to make cordite, the smokeless powder needed for ammunition. Children were so enthusiastic in their conker collecting that transporting them to (secret) locations for use, became a difficult issue and rumor has it that huge piles of them were left to rot.
Today, sadly, I understand that conkers isn’t as popular with kids as it used to be. It’s certainly hard to imagine how it could hold up against a game of Fortnite. Championships are still held and much loved, however, and occasionally come with a little scandal!
