Editing Conkers (section)

==History==

===England===
The first recorded game of conkers using horse chestnuts was on the [[Isle of Wight]] in 1848.<ref name=Opie>Iona and Peter Opie, ''Children's Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, catching, seeking, hunting, racing, duelling, exerting, daring, guessing, acting, pretending'', Oxford: Clarendon, 1969, [https://books.google.com/books?id=AK21AAAAIAAJ&q=Isle+of+Wight+1848 p. 232].</ref> The game grew in popularity in the 19th century, and spread beyond [[England]].<ref name="Vamplew2005"/>

===North America===
{{Refimprove section|date=October 2024}}
Conkers was played during the late 1940s and early 1950s in New York in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and in the 1950s and early 1960s in the amalgamated section of the Bronx and nearby Mt.Vernon. It was also played in Queens, the upper West Side of Manhattan, in the Mohawk Valley area of upstate New York and in Westmount, Quebec and English-speaking parts of Montreal into the 1970s. It was played in the Catholic areas of North Cambridge, MA in the late 1950s. It was being played in the 1960s in Rhode Island,<ref name="wjk">{{Cite web |url=http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/conkers2.htm |title=Conkers - Kingers |access-date=18 June 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060720213725/http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/conkers2.htm |archive-date=20 July 2006 |url-status=dead }}</ref> and into the early 1980s in Smithfield, RI.{{Citation needed|date=June 2009}}

The game was also played in Leicester, Massachusetts in the late 1970s and into the 1980s (and presumably much earlier, given the town's age and predominantly English/Irish settlers) by the children of the Primary School of the town (typically 4th and 5th graders). Leicester's seat of government ("town hall") was a dual use building, serving as both town hall and school. There is a large horse chestnut tree located on the town's common (and adjacent to town hall) that was used as a source for the chestnuts.  The Leicester variant on the name for the game was "Horse Cobblers"(presumably a variant of "Horse Conkers").{{cn|date=October 2023}}