Crown Green Bowls is a sport predominantly played in the north of England, from Coventry and Chesterfield, up to Cumbria and Scarborough, as well as throughout North Wales and the Isle of Man. 

It is a variety of lawn/flat green bowls that has several fundamental differences.

For those of you that have seen flat green bowls (like the sport on the blue carpet indoors) or at many a seaside town, the major differences are that in crown green, the green itself is far from even and has a raised area somewhere near the middle, i.e. the "crown", the jack is biased like the bowls rather than just being a round ball and play can happen in any direction, so long as the jack is at least 19m from the mat.

For those wanting more details on the differences, see "Flat v Crown differences".

Crown Green has its own governing body, the British Crown Green Bowling Association (BCGBA) and governance across the country is done by counties who all affiliate to the BCGBA. These are not all like-for-like with UK counties and are, in many cases, more representative of areas where bowls is played and the leagues that cover those areas. While counties like Cheshire and Derbyshire exist in crown green, Wales is regarded as a single county and North Lancs and Fylde is a separate county to Lancashire.

For those completely new to bowls, there is a separate "New Bowlers Guide" which explains what the sport is all about and how you can get involved. It's a sport for all ages and at St Margaret's we have had bowlers as young as 12 and others still bowling in their 90s. We even saw a 72 year age gap in a club competition final, with a 15 year-old playing an 87 year-old!