Description: Formerly called the Xcel Bowl, and Humber Bowling Alley. Bowling has been a popular sport for thousands of years. Bowling balls and pins were found in the tomb of an Egyptian king who died in 5,200 B.C. The ancient Polynesians bowled on lanes that were 60 feet long, the same as today. Bowling was part of a religious ceremony in fourth century Germany. Those who could knock down the pins were said to be of good character. Those who missed had to do penance. Even Martin Luther was a bowler. British kings Edward II and Richard II banned bowling because they said people were wasting too much time playing the sport. But Sir Francis Drake played a game of bowls before he went to war against the Spanish Armada. Bowling at this time was the game played on flat , but rough ground or grass, aiming to get closest to a 'jack', or in the form called 'skittles' or 'ninepins', where players would knock down wooden stumps (see NTGM004838 for an old picture of a skittles alley). Bowling transferred to America in Colonial days. The British imported lawn bowling but German settlers introduced ninepins, the ancient game that evolved into today's modern tenpin sport. Because of confusion over playing standards, the top bowlers of the 19th century decided that the sport needed a standard set of rules. They started the American Bowling Congress in 1895. Tenpin bowling really took off there as a leisure pastime with the mechanisation of pin setting-up, and ball-returns, and modern bowling alleys soon arrived in Britain after World War 2. The Nottingham bowling alley was built in the 1960's.