BOWLS looks such a genteel game but in Darlington it had an explosive start. Part of the town centre blew up, killing a lad and reducing a yard to rubble and dust, but out of those ashes, exactly 125 years ago this week, the first bowls club was formed.
And today that club is exploding again, only this time in a pleasant way with scores of new members raring for a roll up when the green reopens next month.
The South Park Bowling Club was formed on March 11, 1896, at a meeting in the Mechanics Institute which may still have been surrounded by the rubble caused by the explosion on October 9, 1894, in the yard behind it.