Quintain (jousting)

A later form was a post with a cross-piece, from which was suspended a ring, which the horseman endeavoured to pierce with his lance while at full speed.

[4][5][6] The best known historic feature of the village of Offham in Kent is the Quintain, situated on the Green, a supposedly Roman invention which was popular in Elizabethan times as a means of testing the agility of horsemen.

Writing in 1782 in his History of Kent,[7] Hasted says: On Offham green there stands a Quintain, a thing now rarely to be met with, being a machine much used in former times by youth, as well to try their own activity as the swiftness of their horses in running at it.

The cross piece of it is broad at one end, and pierced full of holes; and a bag of sand is hung at the other and swings round, on being moved with any blow.

[8] The stone and plaque explaining the history of the Quintain was unveiled on Saturday, 15 September 1951 in the presence of General Sir E. Thomas Humphreys (Chairman of the Parish Council), Mrs Emily Cosgrave and Colonel A. M. Wilkinson as part of the Festival of Britain celebrations.