To the right are shown nine London pins at the Freemasons Arms by kind permission of Paul Robinson. An unusual game called Rolly Polly or Half-Bowl is or used to be played in Hertfordshire in which a bowl with huge bias is used. The ball is rolled at 12 pins in a circle, the catch being that the bowl must go past the circle of pins and another pin a bit further away before returning, due to the bias, in the reverse direction. The game can be thought of as a version of Table Skittles played on the floor with the bias replacing the need for the suspension of the ball on a pole and some have speculated that this is how Rolly Polly originated. It seems more likely, however, that the biased ball is just an alternative solution to try to reduce the amount of space needed for the skittles game.
Recent information suggests that the game is in fact of Belgian origin.
Both a skittles variant as described above and a Bowls game called Rolle Bolle have been reported. The latter involves sending large disks with a large bias in an effort to get them close to a stake at the other end of the game area. Ten Pin bowling is the North American version of Skittles and is believed to be based upon the Skittles game from Holland. It was probably the Dutch who took their version of skittles to America in the seventeenth century although another theory believes it is of English origin. Either way, the game fell into disrepute before long as it tended to attract crowds of undesirables and to be played by gamblers.