Scottish Croquet: The English Golf Boom, 1880-1914

It seems a major paradox that turn-of-the-century England, with its powerful cult of athleticism, should have developed a golf craze, yet golf has probably had a more lasting significance as a middle-class legacy than pounding running tracks or playing rugby. Derided-in the mid-nineteenth century as the recreation of an essentially barbaric subject race, 'Scottish croquet' enjoyed more than its fair share of the late Victorian enthusiasm for things north of the border. In so doing it illustrated major shifts in English middle-class attitudes and reflected a growing pattern of investment in providing for leisure.