If the origin of many sport is for combat purposes  i fail to see what using a pole to get over high walls is really about; landing in the thick of it over the parapet without a weapon? I had thought - as a child -  that it was mainly for getting across ditches and streams; Rupert Bear did it several times - so. But this height business I'm less sure about. Anyone any thoughts?  One assumes armour was not worn for it in days of yore. As for hop skip and jump was that to breach fire? Soiled farmyards? Flower beds - or non combatant sport in origin ..... a non anything really.

I'm not at all sure what you intend for this thread, but the classic 'Silly Season' for the British press generally refers to the months of high summer only ... those few weeks when Parliament was in recess, law cases were often deferred and even the universities couldn't be relied upon to produce any scandal as everyone was on hol's. When I worked as a journalist for BBC Science Online and was required to produce two new science/technology stories every weekday (to be posted online before 11am, sharp!), then yes, July and August were a difficult period. Everyone you needed to speak to were either on holiday or away on field-trips; meanwhile nothing much was being published and all the scientific conferences (which is where really new things get announced) were still about a month away just before the academic term started. So during this time of summer dearth, any interesting new story, however silly, was generally fair game (if only just to debunk the popular narrative).

Nevertheless if you want a historic patron for pole-vaulting as a real pursuit, can I suggest His Majesty King Henry VIII ? In 1525, as reported in his chronicle 'The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancastre and Yorke' (pub. 1548), Edward Hall reported:
"In this yere the kyng folowing of his hauke lept ouer a diche beside Hychyn [ie Hitchen, Herts], with a polle and the polle brake, so that if one Edmond Mody, a foteman, had not lept into the water and lift up his hed, whiche was fast in the clay, he had been drouned: but God of his goodnes preserued him."

This has already been discussed here, Henry VIII's hunting accident, but as the response was generally disappointing I'm quite prepared to discuss it further. However I'm not at all sure that's what you're after.

Priscilla wrote:

If the origin of many sport is for combat purposes  i fail to see what using a pole to get over high walls is really about; landing in the thick of it over the parapet without a weapon? I had thought - as a child -  that it was mainly for getting across ditches and streams;

When I was a youngster, I was fondly of the opinion that a ‘French olympic pole-vaulter’ had escaped from Colditz or Stalag Luft III or some such place during the Second World War by using his pole-vaulting skills to get over the walls/perimeter fence. I don’t know where I first heard the story from (probably just schoolboy blatter) and it’s almost certainly apocryphal because I haven’t come across it since. In Stalag Luft III there was the story of allied prisoners making use of a gymnastic vaulting horse. The reason, however, wasn’t to practice for an almighty vault over the wire but rather, by thudding against the horse during exercise, they muffled the sound of digging going on underground in preparation for a tunnel escape. There is another story from the First World War in which an escaping U.S. prisoner of the Kaiser supposedly pole-vaulted across a stream separating Germany and Switzerland. The evidence for this is sketchy though and so it too could be a popular legend. In either case, it seems that rather than being a combat technique which later became a sport, it was more likely a sporting technique which later became useful in wartime.

I know Wikipedia is not deemed a totally reliable source but it would seem that Priscilla's childhood thoughts on the origin of pole vaulting are correct 
Pole vault - Wikipedia.  If folk don't want to read the whole Wikipedia article here is an excerpt from the History section of the Wikipedia entry:-


"Poles were used as a practical means of passing over natural obstacles in marshy places such as the province of Friesland in the Netherlands, along the North Sea, and the great level of the Fens in England across Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk. Artificial draining of these marshes created a network of open drains or canals intersecting each other. To cross these without getting soaked, while avoiding tedious roundabout journeys over bridges, a stack of jumping poles was kept at every house and used for vaulting over the canals.^[3]
Distance pole vaulting competitions continue to be held annually in the lowlands around the North Sea. These far-jumping competitions (Frisian: Fierljeppen) are not based on height.^[4]"

I may have come across as a little harsh in questioning what this thread was about, particularly as the responses by both Viz and LiR have prompted more thoughts on the matter of pole-vaulting.

Poles for crossing dykes ... oh yes, the father of a Dutch friend (whose English was of course impeccable) once kept us by turns enthralled and in stitches of laughter, recounting his exploits as a young lad during the Nazi occupation. Apparently the Germans occupying his town could never work out how the Dutch Resistance were able to move around so quickly as they (the Germans), while possessing fast vehicles and controlling all the roads, still needed bridges to cross the drainage ditches. Occasionally they might find stacks of stout poles on the banks of the dykes - which all the locals all said were just beanpoles - but they never realised what they were for nor their importance in crossing the, to them uncrossable, ditches.

And regards Vizzer's comment about prisoner-of-war camps: I haven't watched the film for a long time and my memory may well be false, but didn't an acrobatic pole-vault attempt to get over the barbed-wire feature in 'The Great Escape'?

Of course if one starts questioning the idea that sport is training for combat, then what about golf? In my opinion it's one of the most pointless past-times ever. Who was it that described golf as, "a pleasant walk spoiled"?

And then what about football? What use are soccer skills in time of war? Oh, but there again ...

Viz and LiR to the rescue thanks to you both. I do so agree about golf; bored shepherd with  crook and the ground littered with sheep doofers - just about sums it up, really. Not sure about badminton, squash,  tennis in any forma ...  and as for laX .. well. But they are sports and people enjoy them but as for war prep orientation,  walking races  certainly  are not. Around here there are awful sports - hare coursing with cars illegally in farmers' fields and I once chanced on an otter hunt - horrible. Kite flying in the subcontinent was ruthless with treated string for the fights -  the danger is stepping off roof tops and all too common. The love of competition seems to be very human but not for all. I used to dinghy race but more for the thrill of skill  of getting the best from the boat  and myself  from sail, water and wind than winning - which at our club was decided by using the RYA formula  for personal handicaps anyway.
Even then I  sometimes thought it was all a bit daft and best not spoken about too much; all part of the silly season as much as anyone else.