Leisure: from child to adult control

Besides working hard, medieval children and adults enjoyed many more holidays (holydays) than we have bank holidays. In the 1500s there was concern that people were on holiday so often, the national economy was in danger. In the castles and villages, towns and growing cities, there were always plenty of other children to play with. Children enjoyed hundreds of games and rhymes passed on through generations, some of them thousands of years old, such as 'five stones' (I and P Opie).