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No Pie, No Priest: A Journey Through the Folk Sports of Britain
Writer Harry Pearson takes a warm and witty journey around Britain in pursuit of the lost folk sports that somehow still linger on in the glitzy era of the Premier League and Sky Sports to find out how and why they have survived and to meet the characters who keep them going.
When Victorian public schoolmasters and Oxbridge-educated gentlemen were taming football, codifying cricket, bringing the values of muscular Christianity to the boxing ring and the athletics field, games that dated back to the pagan era clung on in isolated pockets of rural Britain, unmodified by contemporary tastes, shunned by the media and sport’s ruling elites.
Here they remain, small, secret worlds, free from media scrutiny and VAR controversies, wreathed in an arcane language of face-gaters, whack-ups, potties, gates-of-hell and the Dorset flop; as much a part of the British countryside as the natterjack toad and almost as endangered. No Pie, No Priest! travels through Britain in search of the nation’s traditional rural sports, seeking out the championship of Knur and Spell (a Viking forefather of golf) on the West Yorkshire moors; watching Irish Road Bowling in County Armagh (once a surprising interest of England cricket captain Mike Brearley), Popinjay at Kilwinning Abbey in Ayrshire, the Aunt Sally competitions of Oxfordshire, and taking in world championship Stoolball (often considered the dairymaid’s form of cricket) and Toad-in-the-Hole in West Sussex.
No Pie, No Priest! combines sports reporting, travelogue and history, and features a cast of bucolic eccentrics and many deeply impenetrable regional accents.
When Victorian public schoolmasters and Oxbridge-educated gentlemen were taming football, codifying cricket, bringing the values of muscular Christianity to the boxing ring and the athletics field, games that dated back to the pagan era clung on in isolated pockets of rural Britain, unmodified by contemporary tastes, shunned by the media and sport’s ruling elites.
Here they remain, small, secret worlds, free from media scrutiny and VAR controversies, wreathed in an arcane language of face-gaters, whack-ups, potties, gates-of-hell and the Dorset flop; as much a part of the British countryside as the natterjack toad and almost as endangered. No Pie, No Priest! travels through Britain in search of the nation’s traditional rural sports, seeking out the championship of Knur and Spell (a Viking forefather of golf) on the West Yorkshire moors; watching Irish Road Bowling in County Armagh (once a surprising interest of England cricket captain Mike Brearley), Popinjay at Kilwinning Abbey in Ayrshire, the Aunt Sally competitions of Oxfordshire, and taking in world championship Stoolball (often considered the dairymaid’s form of cricket) and Toad-in-the-Hole in West Sussex.
No Pie, No Priest! combines sports reporting, travelogue and history, and features a cast of bucolic eccentrics and many deeply impenetrable regional accents.
- GenresNonfictionTravelSports
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Published June 8, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 25, 2025
Many years ago I was a student at the University of Kent at Canterbury and I was often intrigued when passing the university staff club to see a bizarre game in progress that was unlike anything I had ever seen before. This, I later learned, was bat and trap, a game so niche that it is pretty much only played in the city of Canterbury and a few neighbouring villages. Harry Pearson’s marvellously entertaining book sees him travel the length and breadth of the UK in search of traditional folk sports. Many, like skittles and crown green bowls, have large regional followings (the former in the West Country, the latter in the north west of England); few are as geographically specific as bat and trap, which is the subject of a particularly entertaining last chapter here. Pearson has a wry sense of humour and is an amusing and informative guide to such specialities as Sussex stoolball, Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling, professional handicap sprinting and the strange West Riding variation on golf, knurr and spell, but he’s also thoroughly versed in the complex and fascinating social history of sport and gambling.
December 12, 2023
A five star Harry Pearson book to end the year, as usual the research is incredible into the history of sports that are not well known throughout the country but are incredibly popular in certain parts
September 25, 2023
I am a fan of Harry's writing and enjoyed this new book very much - it's written in the same warm and funny style and covers an interesting and eccentric topic with his usual enthusiasm. I am subtracting a star however, because he re-uses passages and short pieces from other books of his which is a bit of shame - the passage about the names of flowers (originally from Hound Dog Days) is very funny, but less so the 2nd time around. Likewise some of the anecdotes and quotes, which also were originally in earlier books of his.
June 10, 2023
A gentle stroll around some of Britain's less well-known traditional sports, written in Pearson's distinctive style. I have actually played crown green bowls myself; my grandfather was a local champion. Granny got fed up being left on her own every weekend so she accompanied him down to the club and entered the ladies cup, despite never having played before. And won it. Put a lot of noses out of joint, I can tell you. (St Georges Club, New Moston Manchester 10, circa 1969).
July 5, 2025
"Launcelot Harrison , a gravedigger from the village of Greystoke who was so huge it was claimed his jawbone was ‘ half as big again as that of a stout six - foot man ’ . Given his birthplace , it’s hard not to conclude that Harrison may have been Tarzan’s grandfather."
The third in my sudden rush of Harry Pearson reads this is a genial review of a number of 'folk sports' still played in Britain. It also features the occasional Pearsonesque detour into related things - like Cribbage, or Darts.
If you've read a Harry Pearson book you'll be familiar with the style. Each chapter looks at a different sport, talks you through its history, its rules, and its variations. Some things come up more than once - for example the Kings and Church often look askance at some of these sports and ban them. Or try to ban them. Mainly because they either distracted men from their archery practice or were considered morally dubious.
"Quoits was said to have been introduced into England by Roman legionaries . By 1361 , the sport was so widespread among his soldiery that Edward III ordered it banned as an unwelcome distraction from more martial pursuits."
The other main area of disapproval was gambling and payment. The amateur ethos that swept through sport in the Victorian era - in a way that seemed designed to stop working class people from playing some of these sports - took cuts at a lot of these sports. Sometimes they led to whole different sports - Rugby Union (Amateur), Rugby League (Professional) or Lawn Bowls (Amateur), Crown Green Bowls (Professional). Sometimes the sport would come up with compromises. Cricket had amateurs on the scorecard listed initials first then surname; professionals were surname then initials. Pearson threads that issues through a number of these chapters.
"(The US athletics authorities used their powers in particularly vindictive ways when it came to non-white athletes. Native American Jim Thorpe was stripped of his 1912 Olympic Gold in the pentathlon after it emerged he had once played semi-pro baseball, while the great Jesse Owens was banned a few months after the Berlin Olympics for receiving endorsements. Celebrated for sticking one to Adolf Hitler and his Aryan supermen, he never raced seriously again.)"
Some of them are reduced to little islands of continuing survival. Others survive a little more broadly. Most have been around - in one form or another for centuries. Some are well-known events - Cheese Rolling being the most obvious example.
This is the sort of book I have a soft spot for. It also would make an excellent double-bill with another Harry Pearson book, 'North Country Fair: Travels among Racing Pigs and Giant Marrows', which I might have to re-read.
The third in my sudden rush of Harry Pearson reads this is a genial review of a number of 'folk sports' still played in Britain. It also features the occasional Pearsonesque detour into related things - like Cribbage, or Darts.
If you've read a Harry Pearson book you'll be familiar with the style. Each chapter looks at a different sport, talks you through its history, its rules, and its variations. Some things come up more than once - for example the Kings and Church often look askance at some of these sports and ban them. Or try to ban them. Mainly because they either distracted men from their archery practice or were considered morally dubious.
"Quoits was said to have been introduced into England by Roman legionaries . By 1361 , the sport was so widespread among his soldiery that Edward III ordered it banned as an unwelcome distraction from more martial pursuits."
The other main area of disapproval was gambling and payment. The amateur ethos that swept through sport in the Victorian era - in a way that seemed designed to stop working class people from playing some of these sports - took cuts at a lot of these sports. Sometimes they led to whole different sports - Rugby Union (Amateur), Rugby League (Professional) or Lawn Bowls (Amateur), Crown Green Bowls (Professional). Sometimes the sport would come up with compromises. Cricket had amateurs on the scorecard listed initials first then surname; professionals were surname then initials. Pearson threads that issues through a number of these chapters.
"(The US athletics authorities used their powers in particularly vindictive ways when it came to non-white athletes. Native American Jim Thorpe was stripped of his 1912 Olympic Gold in the pentathlon after it emerged he had once played semi-pro baseball, while the great Jesse Owens was banned a few months after the Berlin Olympics for receiving endorsements. Celebrated for sticking one to Adolf Hitler and his Aryan supermen, he never raced seriously again.)"
Some of them are reduced to little islands of continuing survival. Others survive a little more broadly. Most have been around - in one form or another for centuries. Some are well-known events - Cheese Rolling being the most obvious example.
This is the sort of book I have a soft spot for. It also would make an excellent double-bill with another Harry Pearson book, 'North Country Fair: Travels among Racing Pigs and Giant Marrows', which I might have to re-read.
October 15, 2023
If there was a sporting content involving nothing more than two flies crawling up a wall, you could rely on Harry Pearson to write about it with hilarity and elan. Which is handy, as in “No Pie, No Priest” Pearson sets off on a trek around Britain (and County Armagh) exploring the country’s most offbeat and eccentric sports.
Among the idiosyncratic activities that Pearson explores are the arcane art of Cheese Rolling in Gloucester, Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling, Skittles in Somerset, Road Bowling in the aforementioned Armagh, and the terrifying violent arena of Shinty in the Scottish Highlands (as Pearson describes it, “not a place for the velvet-slippered aesthete”). Many of these improbable sports skirt the edges between being legitimate pastimes and outright brutality, and Harry Pearson details the battle these sports have had to survive, whether their opponents over the last three centuries have been organised religion, puritan zealots, meddling councils or overly officious health & safety bureaucracies (not least because of these games have frequently had connections to illicit gambling).
It might have been easy for “No Pie, No Priest” to descend into the realm of the self-conscious wackiness and zaniness, but Harry Pearson treats these sports – many of them ostensibly ridiculous – with a warm respect for their traditions. Pearson has meticulously researched the back stories of these folk sports, showing how they were able to survive in far-flung regions of Britain. Suffused with Harry Pearson’s trademark gentle north-eastern wit, “No Pie, No Priest” is a refreshing antidote to the wearying contemporary sporting world of VAR, xG, and authoritarian sportswashing.
Among the idiosyncratic activities that Pearson explores are the arcane art of Cheese Rolling in Gloucester, Cumberland and Westmorland wrestling, Skittles in Somerset, Road Bowling in the aforementioned Armagh, and the terrifying violent arena of Shinty in the Scottish Highlands (as Pearson describes it, “not a place for the velvet-slippered aesthete”). Many of these improbable sports skirt the edges between being legitimate pastimes and outright brutality, and Harry Pearson details the battle these sports have had to survive, whether their opponents over the last three centuries have been organised religion, puritan zealots, meddling councils or overly officious health & safety bureaucracies (not least because of these games have frequently had connections to illicit gambling).
It might have been easy for “No Pie, No Priest” to descend into the realm of the self-conscious wackiness and zaniness, but Harry Pearson treats these sports – many of them ostensibly ridiculous – with a warm respect for their traditions. Pearson has meticulously researched the back stories of these folk sports, showing how they were able to survive in far-flung regions of Britain. Suffused with Harry Pearson’s trademark gentle north-eastern wit, “No Pie, No Priest” is a refreshing antidote to the wearying contemporary sporting world of VAR, xG, and authoritarian sportswashing.
August 7, 2023
Ok so I’m in Waterstones bookshop shortly before an overseas holiday and looking for a sports book as one of the two reads I’ll read on holiday. This seemed the most interesting out of those I hadn’t yet read. I like sports books and I love learning new information so go for this
Great book that can easily by read in a day or two.
I must check out another of the authors sports books to add to my list of reads 3/5 from me
Great book that can easily by read in a day or two.
I must check out another of the authors sports books to add to my list of reads 3/5 from me
November 6, 2025
Good, fun read written in the author's usual humourus and informative style.
August 16, 2023
A kaleidoscope of a book about Britain at its most eccentric. From conkers to quoits, cheese rolling to road bowling. I even laughed out loud a few times.
October 30, 2025
Has Pearson's normal lightweight writing style, and covers some of the more obscure 'sports' of Britain. It is a combination of travel, history and sports reporting. I just love the fact that something like Irish Road Bowling was invented and exists today. The backgrounds, often pagan, are perhaps the most interesting aspects of each of the 15 chapters.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews