Kingey

= Kingey (Kingy) =

Highly popular UK children's game of the 1970s/1980s. Kingey consisted of a kind of hand-tennis, where each player had a square and bounced a ball (usually a tennis ball, but any smallish ball would do) over the line into the next box. The receiving player had to hit the ball back to the original player, or into any other player's box either on the volley or after one bounce, as in tennis, squash, etc. The ball could generally only be played while your feet were in your box (although this was waived if you only had a single chalk line to divide you from your opponent), and gymnastic feats could be performed to hit a ball that was well out of your square, while keeping your feet in it.

The "Langley Marish" rules:

Kingey could be played in theory by an infinite number of players over an infinite amount of time, given enough painted or chalked boxes and a long enough lunch hour. The boxes were arranged usually in two rows, which players progressed around as they won and lost points. When a player lost a point he moved from his current position into the bottom box, or 'Nut'. All other players moved up a square. If you remained undefeated, and you or someone else beat everyone ahead of you, you would rise up the boxes until you were in "Queen" and then "King" box, the current best player's position.

Resources for Kingey on the internet or elsewhere are almost non-existent, but there will be many thousands of children with memories of playing this game every day, which was more popular than any other playground sport in some schools, including football. Edits to his Wikipedia article could add greatly to this important piece of late 20th century popular culture.

Doubles

Doubles could be played in large and/or rectangular boxes. Parts of tennis courts were good for this.

Regions Played

Berkshire/Buckinghamshire

List of schools where Kingey played, with earliest and latest dates known to be in existence

Parlaunt Park School, Langley, BerkshireMarish Middle School, Langley, Berkshire (from well before 1978 to well after 1982) (ages 8 to 12).
Foxborough County Combined School, Langley, Berkshire (At least from 1982 up until 1995)
Other Berkshire Schools.
The Marish playground was largely given over to painted kingey squares in the 70s and 80s. Overhead photographs from Google Maps suggest the squares have either been entirely removed, or much reduced in number [http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=sl38de&ie=UTF8&ll=51.501627,-0.545422&spn=0.002321,0.005665&t=h&z=18&iwloc=addr&om=1]

Links to Kingey resources

[http://www.odps.org/glossword/index.php?a=term&d=2&t=525] - The Ghastly Games Dictionary