Fun | Conker Records

Photography by Jonathan Cherry

It’s conker season again! We’re celebrating some of the conkering heroes who have smashed records as well as conkers on strings

Most matches played at once
Record held by the pupils and staff of King Edward’s School in Birmingham who played 388 games of conkers (with 776 players) for five minutes on 28 March 2012.

Most victorious untreated conker

The record is held by a conker that won the BBC Conker Conquest in 1954, winning more than 5,000 matches. However, botany experts have their suspicions that the conker might actually have been an ivory or tagua nut and not a standard horse chestnut.

Most conkers hit in one minute

Sam Thompso and Pete Wicks hold the joint record, each hitting 31 conkers in a minute (just under one every two seconds) in a record made on 2 December 2024.

Longest chain of conkers
Brad Malone became the proud owner of this record on 16 May 2025 with a chain of 21,755 conkers measuring 447.78 metres (1,469 feet 1 inches).

Largest collection of conkers
Guiness World Records does not officially recognise this record as they have concerns that people might ‘overpick’ horse chestnuts, but in 2023, Brian Mountford, a retired inventor from Leek in Staffordshire claimed to have the largest collection at more than 10,000. Smashing!

Information courtesy of guinessworldrecords.com. In our October issue, we paid a visit to Peckham Conker Club and met some of their contestants in our ‘Modern Eccentrics’ pages. The words are by Iona Bower and photography by Jonathan Cherry. The issue is on sale now.

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Make | Conker Laundry Soap

Gather up your champion conkers and give them a new life as a laundrette

Horse chestnuts contain lots of saponin – an organic chemical with a name that’s a clue as to why they’re useful: sapon is ‘soap’ in Latin. While it won’t zap the toughest of stains, this homemade liquid is an economic and eco way for more everyday washing.

The prep: 

• Gather your conkers (about a handful per wash load).
• Remove the outer brown layer, then quarter. 

• Blitz into small pieces in a blender or bash with a rolling pin through a tea towel (Wash any kitchen implements very carefully afterwards as conkers are poisonous to humans). 

• Leave the mixture to dry somewhere like an airing cupboard or windowsill. 

• Once completely dry, store in an airtight jar ready to use. (You can buy ready made ‘washkers’ at watercressqueen.company.site/products)

The wash

• Boil a kettle and add double the quantity of water to the mix used. 

• Steep for at least 30 mins. 

• Filter the liquid through a muslin. The used bits can go in your food waste/compost.
• Use the liquid as you would a normal laundry liquid (add a couple of drops of essential oil if you like it scented).
• Any leftover liquid can be kept in the fridge for a week. 

This Horse Chestnut Laundry Wash is just one of the fascinating ideas from our October Miscellany pages. Turn to page 117 of the October issue to read more miscellaneous things from puzzles and paperweights to turnip carving and foraging for fungi. 

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The official rules of conkers

There are varying rules for a conker fight, but these are the ones laid out by The Woodland Trust, so you can run your own back garden championships:

1. Wrap the loose end of the string around your hand. One player should dangle their conker on about 25cm of string, keeping it absolutely still.

2. The other player then swings their conker at it to try to break it.

3. If the attacking player misses, they can have two more chances before it’s their opponent’s turn.

4. Take turns until one of the conkers breaks and you have a winner.

5. A new conker is called a ‘none-er’ as it hasn’t beaten anyone yet. When it beats another conker, it’s a ‘one-er’. If it beats another, it becomes a ‘two-er’ and so on.

Turn to page 64 of October’s The Simple Things for How to do autumn well, including how to pick a prime pumpkin, Apple Day, and how to go mushrooming (without updating your will).

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