Sports of Childhood. (1834). United Kingdom: Darton and Harvey, Gracechurch-street.
This was not an exclusive pastime of the Regency, or even Britain that matter, as most cultures Ancient and modern have some records of hoop rolling. Children in England are believed to have played a version as early as the 14th or 15th century, depending on the source.
Nonetheless, it was a popular children’s pastime in the Regency era, where children (mostly depicted as young lads) rolled a hoop with a stick trying to keep the hoop upright and rolling for as long as possible. During the Regency, the hoop is often depicted as being wooden, though may have also been a metal like iron.
By the late 18th century, groups of boys in London trundling hoops had become so popular some curmudgeons described it as a nuisance, and this hatred for hoops would continue until the early Victorian era where newspapers raged against the “Hoop Nuisance” and inspired numerous municipal laws against trundling hoops:
Morning Advertiser 13 January 1842
Brighton Gazette, 31 October 1844
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