In 2014, the UK toy market was worth an estimated £3 billion; the equivalent figure in the US was a staggering $22 billion. Toys and games are a significant business in the Western world, and it is hard for us today to imagine a childhood without them. Imagine your own childhood for a moment; a lot of your memories will be punctuated by your favourite toys, or the ones you longed for but never had. Toys change quickly in the modern world, following fashions, fads and educational trends – the popular items of today will be quite different to the things you played with, which in turn will be different to those of your parents, grandparents and ancestors from the deeper past.

For most children in antiquity, play would have been with other children or objects such as sticks, household items or improvised playthings rather than with purpose-built toys. A small number of items made specifically as toys do survive from the ancient world, however. The British Museum’s collection, for example, shows us that some Roman children played with wooden horses on wheels, rattles and balls, but these would have been intended only for the children of the elite.

Historical sources tell us that medieval children largely made their own toys and amusements – such as skill games with cherry stones, or making boats or spears with sticks – and that dolls, known then as ‘poppets’, were popular, but being made of cloth and wood do not survive well in the archaeological record. Games and sports such as dancing, football and archery would also have been practised by children in the Middle Ages, and we know that they had an oral culture of their own from at least the 14th century. Scraps of surviving writing tell us that children knew many verses and songs, and nursery rhymes similar to those of later times were also commonly recited.

Archaeological finds of items from this era that can be recognised as toys include balls, marbles, ice skates, rattles, dolls, boats, tops and miniature versions of household utensils and weapons. One study of medieval Bergen showed that the types of toys used in the city changed over time: at times of uncertainty more miniature weapons were made, while in times of peace and trade, toy boats became more popular, suggesting toys were used by children to mimic and role-play the dominant contemporary adult activities.

It was only when mass production emerged that more children would have had access to manufactured toys, and we can begin to see an industry dedicated to producing children’s playthings surprisingly early. Professional toymakers are recorded in Europe from the 15th century, with the earliest reference to one being in Nuremburg in 1413. Customs accounts from the 15th century show a growing number of toys and dolls coming into the Port of London from Germany and the Low Countries, and given the demand that was clearly present for such items, efforts were made to establish a domestic toy industry in Britain.

One of the richest sources of such objects has been the Thames river foreshore, where the anaerobic conditions of the muddy banks has preserved and thus far produced some 1800 metal toys and miniatures, which are now housed in the archives of the Museum of London. As well as a wide array of tiny household items, toy cannons that could actually be fired, whirligigs and twirlers have been discovered. These items show us both the intricate work of the adults who made and traded the miniatures as well as the sort of things that children used to occupy their free time.

Another light was shone on what our ancestors might have played with as children in Market Harborough’s St Dionysius church, when an unblocked stairwell revealed an unexpected hoard of early 17th century toys. The collection of 117 objects included tipcats, spinning tops, whistles, knucklebones and balls, all the sort of toys that children would commonly have played with in the street. Tipcat, a game in which players tip up and then hit a small wooden ‘cat’ with a larger stick was popular with children for an extensive period of time: an 1853 edition of Punch magazine complained that, “this mania for playing at cat is no less absurd than dangerous…”

Given the adult irritation that may arise from these sorts of games and the proximity of the local grammar school, it is possible that this hoard was a selection of confiscated items taken from unruly or noisy children, which became accidently swept up into the stairwell during the demolition of the church’s rood screen. While we may think of children’s lives at this time as being grim by modern standards, this accidental cache shows us that children were always apt to be playful rather than ‘seen and not heard’.

The toymakers
What of those people making the toys? A letter published in the Morning Chronicle newspaper in February 1850 presented an account of the contemporary toymaking industry in Britain. The correspondent noted that toymaking involved almost every description of artisan – for there is scarcely a species of manufacture or handicraft that does not contribute something to the amusement of the young. There were noted to be 1866 dedicated toymakers and dealers in the country at this time spread across almost every county in England, Scotland and Wales but with particular concentrations in Middlesex, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Lancaster and Gloucester.

Between them, these workers produced enough toys to provide 4½d worth of goods (approximately £60 in today’s values) to every person aged under 20 in Britain. While some ‘fancy’ toys (such as mechanical and clockwork items) were imported from France, Switzerland and Germany, competition to produce toys aimed at the lower end of the market was fierce, and the author noted that workers with hardly enough food to eat did starve in trying to outdo one another in cheapness. Those involved in more skilled work producing higher value toys could do well, however; a London journeyman crafting wooden toys at this time was noted to earn between 3 shillings and 3 shillings 6d (about £200 to £230 today) per day when employed.

The start of the 20th century saw the appearance of some toys that we may think of as being iconic: 1901 saw the launch of Mechanics Made Easy, an educational toy made popular by engineer Frank Hornby. You may know it under its later, snappier name: Meccano. The kits consisted of metal strips and plates of standard sizes that could be built into a variety of models. The seven kits on offer by 1910 started out at a modest 3 shillings sixpence, and went up to 6 guineas each, which would have been the equivalent of a month’s wages for many working class families and therefore well out of the reach of most children.

Then 1902 gave us the teddy bear, named after American President Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt. The Edwardian era also saw the launch of ‘dissected puzzles’ (jigsaws to us), Plasticine (in 1900), the Crayola Crayon (in 1903) and machine-manufactured (and therefore perfectly round) marbles (1905). Skipping ropes for girls were also an Edwardian novelty; while skipping had been around in one form or another since the 1700s, it was originally intended as a game for boys, being considered too vigorous and dangerous for girls to join in.

Toys developed rapidly over the later 20th century. The first plastic Lego bricks were made in 1947, with the Lego Company now the largest toy manufacturer in the world by market value. The 1950s brought us the hula hoop, Frisbees and Barbie, the Etch-A-Sketch appeared in the 1960s, and the 1970s gave the world its first home video games, a market which has expanded hugely over time: by 2009, more money was being spent on them annually than on watching films. While the average British child may now own a staggering 238 toys from a huge variety now commercially available, the more limited range and number of toys in the past does not make them any less cherished by those children who once owned and played with them.