subs. (Winchester College).—A half volley: as verb, to hit hard. [From the Warden of that name famous for disposing of them.] HITTING BARTERS = practice catching, full pitches hit from the middle of Turf towards Ball Court for catching practice towards the end of Long Meads.
c. 1840. MANSFIELD, School-Life at Winchester College, 133. What a noble game cricket must be when one loved it so much, notwithstanding the previous training! What genuine excitement when College and Commoners was played; what frantic shouting when Rapid got well hold of a ‘BARTER’ … and sent the ball from ‘Spanish Poplar,’ right over Meads wall by ‘Log pond.’
1878. H. C. ADAMS, Wykehamica, 327. BARTER … was the most popular boy of his day with his school-fellows. Wonderful things are told of his scores at cricket, at which he is said to have been the hardest hitter of his own times, or of any near him…. He was so renowned for the tremendous force with which he was wont to swipe the ball, commonly known to cricketers as a ‘half-volley,’ that it actually changed its name in the Wykehamical vocabulary, and for fully half-a-century afterwards—and, for all I know, to the present day—bore the name of a ‘BARTER.’
