However, extensive research by the late Dom Lucius Graham OSB has shown that, prior to the building of the present Ball Place, the only version of the game known to Gregorians was not only called 'handball' but was indeed played with the hand.

Dom Lucius surmised that the wall's size, and particularly its height, which exceeded the requirements of handball, prompted the introduction of the bat.

In its heyday, a boy who was good at bat-and-ball 'was as much thought of as a successful cricketer', but, by the end of the nineteenth century, it, too, was losing favour on the plea that it was 'too much fag' to make the cork, worsted and leather balls.

It was inevitable in these circumstances that ball games were largely informal ad hoc pastimes during the various breaks for recreation - and there is a similar version from Douai from which this evolved.

As originally landscaped, the playing area fanned out eastward to form a series of pleasing, if somewhat useless, terraced steps that descended to the curious 'temporary' building which we now know as the Gasquet Hall.

Thirty years later, a pious benefactor, known only from the (still legible) inscription on the plinth, Ora pro me datore 1884, erected a large stone statue of Our Lady at the centre of the second step.

The whole grand design was much reduced and unbalanced in 1958, and again in 1963, by the intrusion of two modern buildings, leaving the Statue of Our Lady somewhat incongruously facing the blank gable end of what we still call the New Classrooms.

At least once it has been the setting for a play (Macbeth) and, before the (now demolished) outdoor rifle range was built, it was frequently used for shooting and still bears the scars.

Dom Hubert van Zeller reports, in his book, Downside By and Large (1953), how boys have been heard 'with mistaken loyalty and rich imagination' explaining to visitors that the Ball Place wall is all that is left of the ancient Abbey of St Gregory's, dissolved by Henry VIII.

(iii) If the served ball comes beyond the line marked across the floor of the court, about 11 feet from the edge of the ball-place and does not bounce below the lower stone rib, it is "over" and must be taken by the "out" players.

(iii) The ball must always hit the wall above the lower stone rib; if it hits the sloping top of the ball-place or the stone rib across the upper part of the wall and bounces in the court, the player on the other side taking it, may claim an "hindrance"; but if he takes it, not claiming an "hindrance", then the "dodge" continues and a score for one side or the other results.

The apparent death of the game as a serious sport was surely inevitable, following the transformation of Downside, during the decade preceding the First World War, from a Continental-style college into a mainstream public school: these were the years that saw the Introduction of Rugby Football, Squash, Racquets and, above all, Lawn Tennis.

Against such, the older, less sophisticated game, with no prospect of external match fixtures, stood little chance of survival and all efforts to re-introduce it have, so far, failed.

The Ball Place, article by Dom Charles Fitzgerald-Lombard OSB in The Downside School and Abbey Raven 2002 publication.