The History of Carts
Carts, the parlour game which has swept the parish, has an interesting history.
Our Carts correspondent, Graham of the Booth, explains how the game, invented by the Romans was perfected in Lamberhurst.
Carts as we now know it was first played by bored Roman Soldiers, firing their hand-held cross bows at a cart wheel.
Before that carts was initially an outdoor game using a full sized ballisa over a range of 100 Roman passus or about 166.6666 yards.
Points were scored when the cross bow bolts stuck into the spokes, rim or a barbarian.
Carts Correspondent Graham of the Booth
A Roman cartwheel
When the game arrived in Britain the local weather was deemed too windy for accurate play.
Following a distressing number of non-barbarian casualties the game moved indoors after a Lamberhurst resident saw the aforementioned Roman soldiers firing their manuballistas at the cartwheel.
A Carts Ballista
As Carts became more popular it became necessary to establish a set of rules as cheating was rife.
A line was drawn for the players to fire from about 7 feet (Roman pessus) 9 inches (uncia) from a wall mounted cartwheel.
This became known as the Ouche, from the Latin for ouch.
However cheating then moved to players using longer and longer arrows and bows to reduce the range.
The Lamberhurst Federation of Cartists and Allied Indolence then set a standard size for the small arrows used.
Cart players soon found other imaginative ways to cheat.
Continued page III..
