Leicestershire villages battle it out at annual ‘bottle-kicking’ contest

Belfast Telegraph - 21/04
Two villages in Leicestershire have competed against each other in an annual sporting tradition known as “bottle kicking”.

The contest between neighbouring Hallaton and Medbourne happens every Easter Monday and participants compete to bring a wooden barrel of beer across a boundary stream in their respective village.

The “bottles” – old wooden barrels holding about a gallon of beer – are sealed with wax before the annual contest.

The bottle-kicking tradition is said to date back to pagan times (Joe Giddens/PA

Two of the bottles are filled with beer and the third, known as the dummy, is made of solid wood and painted red-and-white.

A poster on the event’s Facebook page reads: “The history of the Hallaton Bottle Kicking and Hare Pie Scrambling has links that could well date back over 1,000 years to pagan times.

“The event carries many of the cen...
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