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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2012 22:56:59 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 26, 2012 17:24:25 GMT
Amazingly rare, former Bristol Bagatelle League table: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280979209420#ht_500wt_1288The three bagatelle regions (Chester, Coventry and Bristol) all have their own variants of the game. In the Bristol variant, it is apparent that they have four side pockets in addition to the usual 'Italian' arrangement of the cups. Expect this to go for the high hundreds. :-/ Went for £386 after 9 bids. 3 serious bidders bumped it up to something worthy in the last half-hour. |
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Post by barbelman on Sept 26, 2012 17:43:07 GMT
Amazingly rare, former Bristol Bagatelle League table: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280979209420#ht_500wt_1288The three bagatelle regions (Chester, Coventry and Bristol) all have their own variants of the game. In the Bristol variant, it is apparent that they have four side pockets in addition to the usual 'Italian' arrangement of the cups. Expect this to go for the high hundreds. :-/ What a lovely thing and very unusual as you say Tommo. I need a bigger house! Tony |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 27, 2012 22:28:36 GMT
Restoration problem, they're not kidding: cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170916288069#ht_500wt_1288Needed would be: Re-cloth New side cushions (rubber probably like concrete) wooden cups remarked in original style Attention from french polisher to the case (has a nasty lengthwise split) Table is not the maximum size, 6ft rather than 8ft when opened out. Has antique value of course, but will be surprised if it tops fifty quid. :-/ Went for just £21 after 2 bids. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2012 14:53:53 GMT
What a lovely thing and very unusual as you say Tommo. I need a bigger house! Tony Less than 30 mins left on it, Tony, and so far it's only up to £175. :o |
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Post by barbelman on Oct 6, 2012 16:41:26 GMT
What a lovely thing and very unusual as you say Tommo. I need a bigger house! Tony Less than 30 mins left on it, Tony, and so far it's only up to £175. :o I would seriously love to but.... :-/ Tony |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2012 17:06:33 GMT
Went for £386 after 9 bids. 3 serious bidders bumped it up to something worthy in the last half-hour. |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2012 22:50:19 GMT
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Post by littlemark on Feb 23, 2013 22:38:47 GMT
 Bagatelle Table by scrumpyboy, on Flickr So here's my baby Bagatelle, a little 5 footer. It came without the balls so I've ordered a set from Master Games, but these are only 1" diamater so was wondering if anyone on here has experience of playing with such small balls (ahem!), and what the best queue option might be. Chances of finding an original set seems pretty slim I'd have thought. Cheers, Mark pub-games.blogspot.co.uk/ |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 23, 2013 23:39:28 GMT
Your bagatelle looks in excellent condition, LittleMark, and the 1" dia balls sound like they will fit the cups on a 5 foot table. You have the wooden bridge which are very rare and hard to come by. The original ball set for bagatelle came in a box like this:  I would imagine very few of these have survived - but you never know your luck and when a set might pop up in an antique shop somewhere. |
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Post by littlemark on Feb 24, 2013 8:07:35 GMT
I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for one of those, I think the scoring pegs are about as rare as it gets. I'm just wondering how a normal cue tip performs with such tiny balls. Did your table come with the original cues? Also, I always understood that the cups were lined with printed paper, but yours appear to be painted boxwood. The cups on my table are a bit grubby but I'm reluctant to clean them other than a dusting if it turns out it is a paper covering.
Cheers, Mark
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2013 11:35:51 GMT
Hi Mark, I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for one of those, I think the scoring pegs are about as rare as it gets. I'm just wondering how a normal cue tip performs with such tiny balls. Did your table come with the original cues? Also, I always understood that the cups were lined with printed paper, but yours appear to be painted boxwood. The cups on my table are a bit grubby but I'm reluctant to clean them other than a dusting if it turns out it is a paper covering. Cheers, Mark The scoring pegs I would imagine to have looked like toothpicks made of bone - very unlikely to have survived a century without being diverted for use elsewhere (cribbage boards?) when the game went out of vogue. Talking of which, matchsticks now do the job for either. Cues - well a junior snooker or pool cue would do the job. I have a selection in my rack of 36" and 42" cues (bought from local sports shops) for the younger members of my family. The quality of the cue tip needed will only come into the equation if the cushions are relatively new, with the rubber giving a good bounce. As regards the cups, painted boxwood sounds right, and the best thing I can recommend is the stuff we use to clean our bar billiards pockets: linseed oil. |
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Post by Chris_Sav on Feb 24, 2013 12:34:20 GMT
the stuff we use to clean our bar billiards pockets: linseed oil. arggggg, just a damp cloth on bar billiards pockets is my recommendation. Any form of polish/spray/oil gets onto the balls and into the cloth eventually. Sav |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 27, 2013 17:05:12 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2013 13:22:30 GMT
Good condition 7ft table on sale from Milton Keynes: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Victorian-Folding-Mahogany-7ft-Bagatelle-Table-Bar-Billiards-Table-c-1880-/160982110773Went for £96 after 15 bids.
Something of the history of bagatelle is enclosed with the merchandising blurb, worth repeating here: "The history of Bagatelle is shrouded in mystery and no one is quite sure how it developed. However it is suggested that the origins of the game probably were created in France. What we can be sure of is that between the period of 1770 - 1850 Bagatelle was equally as popular a pastime as Billiards.
The famous manufacturer John Thurston recorded that he manufactured significant numbers of Bagatelle tables between the years of 1818 to 1845. A sales brochure he produced for the French market actually describes the tables as "Billiards Anglaise" which adds further to the uncertainty about the game. It is possible that the French angle is completely inaccurate and the game was developed in England
The game was deemed offensive enough by the government for it to be included in its Gaming Act legislation. It was decreed that there should be "no play on a public Billiard table or Bagatelle table from 1am to 8am and on Sundays , Christmas Day and Good Friday".
However banning anything only leads to its increased popularity and by Victorian times the game had become immensely popular leading to significant numbers of tables being manufactured for the home. The tables were slightly smaller than their counterparts in Pubs and often folded, but the quality of manufacture was very good indeed.
The game as played in the North of England differs somewhat from the game played elsewhere. The game starts with a black ball spotted in front of the nine holes. Eight white balls are then struck in succession by a player in an effort to get the balls to fall into the holes with the restriction that the ball being played must cannon off another ball before falling into a hole. The black ball scores double points so the aim is normally to try to roll the black ball into the the central nine point hole.
In the South of England the tables tend to be longer - sometimes up to 10 feet long and feature two side pockets about three quarters of the way up on each side. The game is played in a similar fashion , but instead of one black ball , two reds are used instead.
English Bagatelle Rules History
Bagatelle is a traditional game of skill which has been played in English homes, pubs and social clubs for nearly 200 years since the early part of the 19th century. It is one of the oldest pub games in the country. The principle of the game is very simple:- pot as many balls as you can! As the game is played from the front end of the table only, it is ideal for situations with limited space. A bagatelle table is an elegant piece of furniture which gives many hours of happy entertainment in homes across the world. Bagatelle tables make excellent dining tables with a well made cover on top and are fast becoming collectors items.
The origins of bagatelle are entwined with the antiquity of many other games. Its roots are at a time when people tossed or rolled rocks and pebbles on the ground in the outdoors, eventually confining this aimless play to a defined targeted area marked out on the ground. It has been reported that the ancient Egyptians played a game on a grass course, with a targeted area laid out in the shape of a diamond. A "ball" was used to knock down "pins" in the targeted area.
By Greco-Roman times, rocks had given way to fabricated leather or wooden balls, and pebbles evolved into something akin to marbles. One ancient Roman version of this outdoor game became Boccie (an Italian form of what the British refer to as Lawn Bowls). Minor versions of outdoor bowling games (which used the evolved pebbles) became the many marble games which children continue to play to this day. Full-sized "bowl" games became a number of other games which people still play.
One variation introduced sticks and arches (or wickets) into the outdoor bowls game as early as the 14th century and this modification evolved into the modern outdoor games of Shuffleboard and the game of Croquet - and indoor games such as Billiards and Snooker. When people began to adapt the outdoor games to the indoors - initially they moved them to a very special indoor place - public taverns or pubs. At first, game play may have simply been on the floor of a pub, and these games evolved into the indoor game of Bowling and all it's derivatives such as Tenpin Bowling. Eventually people made use of fabricated defined targeted areas which could sit on a table or stand on the floor on four legs. In time, floor standing games became Skittles, and table-top games became Carom and Crokinole games.
In France, around the reign of Louis XIV (1636-1715), someone designed a narrow oblong table, half the width of a billiard table. It is believed that the Bagatelle table was designed to be a leveller of talents and to give equal opportunity to the casual player lacking the skill for pocket or carom billiards. This new table featured a target area at one end and enabled play only from the other end. From its beginnings sticks and balls were used as in standard billiards, but the targets were nine "pins" placed in a pattern at the far end of the table. Wooden arches or wickets were used to increase the challenge.
A player would have a turn, attempt to knock down the pins, and then the pins would be reset for the next player who would try to beat the score of the previous player. It is believed that resetting the pins, arches and wickets each time delayed the play and a solution was sought to speed up the game play.
Eventually, scooped out target areas (cups) replaced the pins, arches and wickets and this sped things up considerably, making the game much more popular. This more modern type of nine cup bagatelle table was brought to England around the late 18th/early 19th Century and has remained a fixture in some British pubs to the present day.
One popular theory is that the name 'Bagatelle' was introduced in the late 18th Century from France. Back in the 17th Century, Louis XIV gave one of his granddaughters a piece of land outside Paris on which a small house was built. Initially the house was called Mademoiselle Pavillon. Much later, in the 18th Century, the house became known as Castell Bagatelle and then the Chateau de Bagatelle.
Louis XVI gave the house and land to his younger brother, Duke Arthur (the comte d'Artois), a bit of a playboy by all accounts, who was an inveterate gambler who always found himself in financial difficulties. Winning big on a bet in early 1777, Arthur expanded the Castell Bagatelle, and included a salon du jeu (a games room) which featured a new half-width billiard table with cups instead of pins.
Later in 1777 a party was thrown in honour of Louis XVI and the Queen at the newly renovated and re-named Chateau de Bagatelle. The highlight of the party was the new table game featuring the slender table and cue sticks, which players used to shoot ivory balls up an inclined playfield. The new game was dubbed 'Bagatelle' by Duke Arthur and swept through France. It is said that the game became very well known in aristocratic French gambling circles in the latter part of the 18th century. It is likely that at this time bagatelle was equally as popular as billiards. This would date the game we now know as 'Bagatelle' to around 1777.
Another theory is that the game could have been of English origin and merely made popular by French aristocrats. The famous manufacturer John Thurston started business in 1799 and recorded that he manufactured significant numbers of Bagatelle tables between the years of 1818 to 1845. A sales brochure he produced for the French market actually describes the tables as "Billiards Anglaise" which adds further uncertainty about the games origins.
It is possible that the French angle is completely inaccurate and the game was developed here, but it could also mean that Thurston was merely describing the tables as of English manufacture. In the early 19th Century, gambling was seen as a serious problem, and bagatelle was deemed morally dangerous enough by the government for it to be included in its Gaming Act legislation of 1845. It was decreed that there should be no play on public Bagatelle tables from 1am to 8am and on Sundays , Christmas Day and Good Friday!
The legislation in 1845 also made reclaiming gambling debts legally unenforceable. In 1854 it was made illegal to run a casino or any "common gaming house". The rich, as a result, took their holidays in Monte Carlo and other Continental gambling fleshpots. Working people had fewer options, and the police were kept busy by raiding pub backrooms in the hope of finding a game of bagatelle being played with a couple of bob on the table. The antigambling laws were not relaxed until 1960.
During the early 19th century, many different types of bagatelle table began to appear in France, England, throughout Europe, and in North America. The game that we know today, played on a baize covered table with holes (cups) at the target end quickly became the most popular pub game in Britain and remained so for the next century or so.
Charles Dickens, in the Pickwick Papers (1836-37), wrote that Samuel Pickwick and other members of the Pickwick Club often relaxed at the bagatelle table in the Peacock Tavern.
In an 1863/64 political cartoon, Abraham Lincoln is portrayed playing bagatelle. The game must have been very popular indeed at this time to be so well known in the United States and there are still bagatelle tables in the USA and Canada to this day.
The latter part of the 19th Century and early part of the 20th was arguably when Bagatelle was at its most popular. Bagatelle halls were known to exist all over Britain, and the game was popular with both men and women.
During this time, enhancements were made to the playing equipment. Old wooden maces, used to push the balls up the table, were replaced by cues similar to those used to play snooker and pool today. Rubber cushions and leather cue tips were introduced and ivory balls, which had been used for many years, were gradually replaced with Bonzoline and Crystalate.
By the 1930's Crystalate had become the most popular ball used, and it remained so until approximately 1973 when the Super Crystalate ball was introduced. This ball was lighter and faster than Crystalate and proved very popular with snooker players especially, who found that it provided greater screw control and power which allowed the average player to move the cue ball about in a way that had only been possible before by top players.
Sadly, with the steady decline in the number of public houses throughout the 20th Century, the game has declined also.
English Bagatelle Rules belong to the obstacle billiards category of cue sports. Obstacle billiards is a class of billiard games that are played with various obstacles on the table." |
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Post by littlemark on Mar 8, 2013 16:06:07 GMT
Just thought I'd mention that I'm  with my new 1" bagatelle ball set from Masters Games, though a little cheaper would have been better. I'm also pleased to say that this is a game the missus is happy to play as I don't think its going to make it down the pub Also of possible interest if local is a 7' or 8' Mahogany Bagatelle I spotted at Trinity Antiques & Collectibles in Horncastle, Lincs. I didn't check inside, but it comes with cue and mace, possibly more. £110, but these places are often open to some haggling. Cheers, Mark |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 10, 2013 13:21:03 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 13, 2013 11:18:33 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2013 19:35:53 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2013 18:00:32 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2013 22:24:25 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Sept 28, 2013 11:42:47 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 5, 2013 21:39:50 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2013 19:08:34 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2013 17:14:54 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2013 17:20:45 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2013 11:12:25 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 14, 2014 22:52:25 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 21, 2014 16:19:22 GMT
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Post by littlemark on Mar 23, 2014 9:49:11 GMT
Had a couple of days up in Bagatelle country and will be featuring a few of the pubs on my blog over the coming weeks. First is an introduction here: pub-games.blogspot.com/2014/03/bagatelle.htmlProper hospitable bunch of players up there, highly recommend a visit to Chester for for a few 'Sticks'. Incidentally, the Cross Keys is now a Joules Brewery pub, and the Slaughtered Lamb bar upstairs no longer has a Bar Billiards Table. Cheers, Mark |
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with my new 1" bagatelle ball set from Masters Games, though a little cheaper would have been better. I'm also pleased to say that this is a game the missus is happy to play as I don't think its going to make it down the pub