The Upper Collegers at one time bathed at the oak in the playing fields, the Lower at a spot not far away, which bore the significant name of “Deadman’s Hole.” Near by was the old wharf, done away with in 1840, where the Collegers used to keep their boats. In those days, however, they went but little on the river, preferring to concentrate their energies in preparing for the annual matches at cricket and football with the Oppidans. The rivalry was then very keen, and in winter was even shown by fierce snowball fights, in which both sides often suffered severely. It may seem strange that seventy boys could face six hundred, but some of the biggest boys in the school were Collegers, as they were not superannuated until they were nineteen.
About 1828 the annual matches, both at cricket and football, between the Oppidans and Collegers were done away with. They were always the most stoutly contested games of the year, and put both parties on their mettle far beyond the excitement of any other match. A good deal of bitterness was sometimes displayed, and now and then a smack on the head or a designed “shin” were given and received; but, on the whole, these matches did something to draw Oppidans and Collegers together, and their abolition is to be deplored, though, in the present age, the great excess of Oppidans would, it must be confessed, have rendered their continuance difficult.
Of all the various contests which formerly took place between Collegers and Oppidans the annual match at the wall on St. Andrew’s Day alone survives, and has lost none of its interest, though the two elevens are chosen from seventy Collegers and from close on a thousand Oppidans. In reality the chances of victory are in a great degree equalised owing to the fact that whilst the Collegers have every opportunity of playing the game during the whole of the time--usually about six years--during which they remain at Eton, only a small number of Oppidans play at all till within two years of their leaving school. It would here be superfluous to enter upon any detailed description of the game. [SN: THE “WALL”] Suffice it to say that it is played within a narrow strip of ground some twenty feet wide and close up against the old wall built in 1717, the goals being the tree with a white mark at the end towards Slough, and the door of Weston’s Yard at the Eton end. The origin of this peculiar form of football is very obscure. Mr. E. C. Benthall, K.S., Keeper of the Wall in the present year, 1911, who has most obligingly furnished me with some interesting information, believes that it originated from “passage football,” and doubts if it was ever played very seriously till about one hundred years ago, at which time it was an entirely different game from what it is now. In spite of its quaint terms, it would seem to be of no great antiquity, at least in anything like its present form. The wall itself dates from 1717, but about the earliest record of any regular game there dates from the first decade of the nineteenth century, at which time any one who chose seems to have been allowed to play, with the result that there were usually eighteen or twenty a side. It was then practically the only form of football popular at Eton, though occasionally something approaching to the modern “Field Game” was played in the open. Till 1841, however, such forms of relaxation were discouraged by the masters. Nevertheless, on the piece of grass between the path and the river in Lower Club the Collegers, up till about 1863, played a variety known as “Lower College.” This was probably a link between the field and wall games, for it had “shies” and “goals.” In early days the wall game was played on a much wider strip of ground than is at present the case. The bully was not its essential feature, and the ball was often run down the whole length of the wall. Sixty years or so ago matches of Dames _v._ Tutors were occasionally played, and during one of these the ball somehow was pitched right on the top of the wall, along which it ran for some eight yards before coming to a dead standstill on the top.