Bone Skates in Moorfields

FitzStephen’s description of London in the twelfth century tells how, when the marshes of Moorfields froze, the young men tied the leg-bones of animals under their feet with thongs and slid over the ice, pushing themselves along with iron-shod poles. In imitation of the tournament they would run at each other and strike with their poles, until one was knocked down and slid a long way on his back. Bone skates of this kind were still being dug up in Moorfields and Finsbury in Chambers’s day, and a pair was kept in the British Museum.