Old Photograph Children Playing Rounders Perth Perthshire Scotland

Old photograph of children playing Rounders in a park in Perth, Perthshire, Scotland. Rounders, Irish: cluiche corr, is a bat and ball game played between two teams. It involves hitting a small, hard, leather cased ball with a rounded end wooden, plastic or metal bat. The players score by running around the four bases on the field. The game of rounders has been played in England since Tudor times, with the earliest reference being in 1744 in A Little Pretty Pocket Book where it was called baseball. In 1828, William Clarke in London published the second edition of The Boy's Own Book, which included the rules of rounders and also contained the first printed description in English of a bat and ball base running game played on a diamond. The following year, the book was published in Boston, Massachusetts, America. The first nationally formalised rules were drawn up by the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland in 1884. After the rules of rounders were formalised in Ireland, associations were established in Liverpool, England; and Scotland in 1889. Both the New York game and the now defunct Massachusetts game versions of baseball, as well as softball, share the same historical roots as rounders. It was a popular game among British and Irish school children, and especially among girls.



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