What a Racket!

this is an interesting and very historic token. Tennis was an illegal game at one point but has been played in Oxford since the Sixteenth Century. there were a number of courts, often situated at the rear of public houses. 

Thomas Wood working under Jane Hallam’s licence obtained in 1647 a licence ‘to hang out the sign of the Salutation in St. Martin’s parish.’ In 1651 he obtained from Katherine Edwards a lease of a tenement (No. 104, High Street) in St. Mary’s parish, to­gether with a licence to sell wine. This house belonged to Oriel College and behind it and No. 105, High Street, lay a tennis-court (now lecture-rooms of the college)

Obv: Thomas Wood; tennis racquet in centre; Rev: *VINTNER-IN-OXON.1652/W T M.

images by kind permission of Ashmolean Museum 

HCR6521 Farthing (quarter penny) token of the tennis court keeper Thomas Wood, Oxford 1652 © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

information from various sources and 

17th and 18th Century Wine-Bottles of Oxford Taverns - Oxoniensia

oxoniensia.org/vol%206/Leeds.doc

by ET LEEDS - ‎

Some Oxford Medallions

    The Radcliffe Infirmary Hospital (circa 1900). The diameter is 27x35mm.

                                 Trinity College rowing prize medal (1868) silver

                                           All Souls' Quincentenary 1938 silver

Martyrs' Memorial 1843 bronze

                                Oxford Cathedral medal c.1845 silvered bronze

                                        Pitt Rivers 'I was here' medal (1885) bronze

Oxford County Lunatic Asylum nursing medal c.1880 silver

                                     City of Oxford School prize medal c.1930 silver

All images courtesy of Charles Riley

 www.charlesriley.co.uk