The origin of the Billiards family of games is partially shrouded in mystery but it is many centuries old and almost certainly derived from an out-door game of the croquet family played during the 14th century in Northern Europe. Even the word 'billiard' has a disputed etymology - but it is likely a French derivative coming either from 'billart' (mace) or 'bille' (ball).

During the middle-ages and even back to ancient Egypt, many sports were played with balls, clubs, maces or bats and skittles. There are ancient pictures depicting games that are clearly the forerunner of modern Skittles (Americans will know this as 10 pin bowling), Bowls, Quoits and Tennis, for instance. [It is popular in textbooks to paste in pictures of these various ancient games and to claim some kind of relationship with Billiards which, in this author's opinion, is highly dubious. ]


However, records do show one game that is related to Billiards. Sometimes known as 'Ground Billiards', the game was played on a small outdoor court with a hoop at one end and an upright stick at the other. This Croquet-esque pastime required people to strike balls around the court with maces. No rules are known for the game at this time but it seems entirely possible that they would have been pretty similar to the rules outlined for Port & King Billiards in the next section.


Clive Everton (in his History of Billiards) states that Ground Billiards crystalized into existence in the 1340s and carried on into the 1600s. It was apparently played throughout much of Europe - in Italy it was known as 'biglia', in France 'bilhard', in Spain 'virlota' and some texts say that in England it was known as 'ball-yard' although the author has not found a source for this. The game appears to be critical to game history since it apparently led to the families of both Billiards and Croquet games. There is no evidence of an ancestor of Billiards prior to this time, unless you do lower your criteria to count all the other games played with bats, balls and skittles.

In 'Sports and Pastimes of England' by James Strutt, there is an illustration of Ground Billiards (shown on the left). Some textbooks claim that this is evidence that of the game being played in the 1200s as it is copied from a 13th century manuscript. In fact, although other diagrams before and after are shown as 14th century, only one is listed as 13th century and the picture in question has no date against it at all. None-the-less, 14th century (1300s) seems to be a reasonable bet, and according the Canadian National Billiards website, the manuscript's date has been estimated to be from 1344.


The picture to the right shows a section of a woodcut engraving from the 1600s. This engraving is a copy of a tapestry that was commissioned at some time in the 1500s for the St. Lo Monastery in France. The tapestry shows the same scene being played in a wood in springtime.