Post-war
Boxing Day at the Brickmakers Arms in Leigh once meant one thing above all others: dadlems. This curious old table game, something like skittles in miniature, was played at the inn just once each year, and that single annual contest was enough to keep it alive in the village memory for generations. The game had been part of local life for close to a hundred years by the middle of the last century, yet today few people have heard of it.
The Kent and Sussex Courier thought it worth recording in December 1950, when an article headed 'Dadlems day is but once a year' appeared in the paper on 29 December. It reported that nearly thirty people had gathered for that year's Boxing Day match, and that the honours had gone to two champions, Mr A Friend and Mr A Denton. Among the players was Mr A Baker, who offered a wry observation on the game's decline: people, he said, prefer darts. The Courier piece was accompanied by a photograph of players, though sadly they are not named in it; that picture is now held by Joyce Field.
The 1950 report was not the paper's only brush with the game. A year earlier, the Courier had previewed the forthcoming Boxing Day match in an article of 23 December 1949, and followed it up with a further piece on 30 December 1949, after Mr A E Denton and Mr S Brooker had taken the champion honours for that year. Even earlier, on 23 December 1939, the Courier had carried an article about dadlems, showing that interest in the game stretched back through the war years and beyond.
So what exactly was dadlems? The best description comes from Jack Lucas, who wrote about the game in the village memoir 'We Had Everything …'; his account appears on page 43. The table on which it was played measured roughly three foot square, with raised edges along three of its sides. Nine wooden pins stood at one end, each about four inches high. Players threw lead weights, only slightly larger than an old five shilling piece, aiming to knock the pins down. Heavy pieces of metal were thus bowled over a hard wooden board, and the whole exercise has been likened to skittles in miniature form. Between annual contests the board was kept safely in a cupboard, brought out only for its one day of glory. Mr Thurston, landlord of the Brickmakers during the Thirties, would have known it well. The game proved popular enough to be taken along to fetes as well.
Mr W Seal was quoted about the board, and his comments caught wider attention. The Overseas Tourist Association took an interest in it, and the board was said to be one of the oldest in England. A large dadlems board, however, could not be sent to London, so its fame remained largely local. It was also recognised that dadlems predated the games of rings and darts, making it a true survivor from an earlier age of inn games.
The game was not unique to one Leigh pub; it was also played at the Bricklayers' Arms in the village. And it attracted attention further afield: The Scotsman mentioned dadlems on 16 July 1949 in an article titled 'Mell and Dadlems', connecting it with paille maille, the old French game whose name survives in London's Pall Mall. That connection was celebrated when the Travel Association chairman formally reopened paille maille at the Freemason's Arms Inn on Hampstead Heath, an occasion that drew old inn games experts from Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Among the traditional games discussed on such occasions were 'Toad in the Hole', played at Clandon in Surrey, and 'Bat and Trap', which came from Canterbury. Dadlems belonged firmly in this company of vanishing pastimes.
This article was written by Joyce Field in December 2017. In February 2020 she added a note recording that Trisha Robynns, who runs a blog site, had contacted the society with a newspaper article about the game, helping to bring these memories back to light. Photocopies of the newspaper reports are held in the village's local history society Archives under 'Sport', where anyone curious about this once-a-year Boxing Day tradition can read more.