THE streets of East Lancashire and the surrounding fields and woods were one big playground to the children of yesterday.

Child’s play through the decades embraced an array of games – some for the boys, some for the girls and one or two that all could join in with.

This week Burnley historian Ken Spencer has asked if readers can remember checks and bobbers, also known as bobbers and kibs, or five stones, He knows it was played in the 1920s, that it was popular round the Duke Bar area of town in the 1950s and it was once a craze at the grammar school.

Ken said: “My partner Barbara Bailey knew of it and had a set of the pieces – dice and marbles, which may now be at Towneley.

“There is also a set at the Weavers Triangle Visitor Centre, marked jacks and marbles.”

“Is the game still played, or has it been superceded by computer games? I would love to know.”

The game was obviously popular around the early 1900s as this old pamphlet shows. Both young girls and boys in their mob caps and aprons and boys in their plus fours and straw boaters are seen in the street deep in concentration.

Bobber and kibs seems to be an old marbles game, played mainly by the lads, who would use the grooves of any convenient man hole to use as special gullies.

Winning rivals’ marbles and swopsies helped them build up their collection of different sizes and colours.

Among girls’ favourite games were hopscotch, with the squares chalked out on the pavement and skipping – and if there were only two or three of you, one end was simply tied to the nearest gas lamp post.

Did you know that in the early 1900s superior skipping ropes had wooden handles with ball bearings inside so the rope did not twist out of shape?

Most youngsters, however, had to make do with a length of old rope.

Lamp-posts were also used by the lads to swing from with ropes, or as the wickets for a game of cricket.

Back in the 1900s there were also hoops, wooden ones with sticks to beat them along the pavement, or iron ones, which the lads kept running with their hands.

Then there were whips and tops, yoyos and, in the autumn, conkers, when lads would cheat to make their conkers the hardest – was it vinegar they soaked them in?

Do you also remember playing rounders or football in the streets with your jumpers for markers, hide and seek, leap frog, or knock and run, which often earned you a telling off from the homeowner?