Halford Cockpit, Main Street, Halford

1 Opposite the former Bell coaching inn – now called Halford Bridge Hotel – is the oldest bowling green in the county and one of the five oldest in the country. There was a clubroom with wine cellar below and cockpit in the loft above. Cockfighting took place at least as late as the 1880s. The pavilion was pulled down in 1951 to make room for a car park and because of plans to widen the Fosse Way. These improvements did not actually take place until 1962.
2 A Warwickshire antiquary, Mr.Henry Ferrars, spoke in 1595 of the “Great Bowling at Hawford and Gameing”. The cockpit: “at one end of it is a platform raised two or three steps above the general level of the floor and fenced in with a slight railing to keep the combatant birds within bounds”.
3 Site marked on annotated map.