Music sheet cover
'The Polo Dancers'
Published by Chappell and Company
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
This music cover was for a topical song about the sport of polo which was introduced into the UK in the 1860s. In the 19th century it became a popular sport in the British colonies from where it arrived in England, although polo is thought to have originated in ancient Persia in 600 B.C. The first polo fields opened at the Hurlingham Club in London in 1874, where the first written rules of polo were established. Polo is traditionally seen as a sport for royalty and the wealthy because of the numbers of horses that each rider needs for one game. The first international polo championship was in 1886 between America and the UK.