BADMINTON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 December 1939, Page 11

BADMINTON

HOW THE GAME BEGAN. A rainy day was responsible for the game of badminton that has become so popular in New Zealand during the last few years. It was first played in England about 70 years ago, but the people who played it then did not know it was badminton: they only knew they had invented a new game. Its name came afterwards.

The people who invented it were guests of the Duke of Beaufort at a house party at his country seat. Badminton. in Gloucester, and as it was a rainy day they were wondering what they could do to amuse themselves. Suddenly one of them had a bright idea. The children had been having a game of battledore and shuttlecock, he decided the grown-ups could play it, too. To they began, but they played it differently from the children. They stretched a cord across the hall and played over this. They made up all sorts of rules as they went along mid ended up by becoming the originators of a new game which proved to be very popular. British people going out to India took the new game with them and developed it there. Proper rules were made for it and it. became a proper game. Later on it was re-introduced into England and officially given the name of Badminton in honour of the Duke of Beaufort and his guests, who had had such a jolly time inventing it on that rainy day in Gloucester a few years before.