Sport and Competition in Britain

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Sibiu, 2012 Sports and Competition in Britain from the Norman Period until Today The history of sport probably extends as far back as the existence of people as purposive sportive and active beings. Sport has been a useful way for people to increase their mastery of nature and the environment. The history of sport can teach us a great deal about social changes and about the nature of sport itself. Sport seems to involve basic human skills being developed and exercised for their own sake, in parallel with being exercised for their usefulness. It also shows how society has changed its beliefs and therefore there are changes in the rules. Of course, as we go further back in history the dwindling evidence makes the theories of the origins and purposes of sport difficult to support. Nonetheless, its importance in human history is undeniable. Sports probably play a more important part in people’s life in Britain that it does in most other countries. A remarkable range of popular games and contests was played and enjoyed in Britain before the advent of modern sports. The most favourite pastimes of the Norman period were that of hunting, howking, and other field sports. In that time, William I, was so fond of these games, that he created New Forest. It was created as a royal forest in about 1079 for the royal hunt, mainly deer. It was created at the expense of more than 20 small hamlets and isolated farmsteads. But William I did not know that in that very forest, his son, William Rufus, would be slain by a weapon used in his favourite pastime. Henry I, another son of William, was also so fond of field sports, that like his father, he destroyed many churches and villages to form a park at Woodstock, the first of its kind in England; and surrounded it with a stone wall seven miles in circumference. Here he kept, besides a great number of deer, many beasts sent to
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