FROM THE ARCHIVES

Club Archivist, Clare Button, writes about the history of cricket at Hurlingham

Acricket match on a summer’s day at Hurlingham seems like a timeless sight, despite the fact that the Club was nearly a century old before it got its own cricket ground. However, the archives reveal a much longer, unofficial history of cricket at the Club, which goes back much further.

The Minutes of the General Committee on 22 July 1870 state that, ‘Leave was given to the servants of the Club to play a cricket match in the shooting enclosure after the shooting season was over.’ At this time, the Club closed at the end of the pigeon shooting season and did not reopen until the following April. This informal cricket match would have been a chance for staff to relax and celebrate the end of the Club’s busy second year of existence and may have become an annual event.

Just over a decade later, there is evidence of an appetite for cricket from members as well as staff. The Committee Minutes from October 1882 record that ‘a letter was read from Mr Head asking the Committee to convert a part of the grounds into a cricket ground.’ It is likely that the writer was Fred W Head, who first appears in the list of members in 1880. Mr Head did not get his request, most likely because the Club grounds were busy enough with polo and other sports. 

However, the purchase of the second polo ground in 1894 created space for more events, including cricket, although matches still took place on an informal basis. There was clearly enough cricketing activity, however, to merit a mention in John Galsworthy’s 1907 novel The Country House (which mentions ‘the stoics going to dine… after a hard day’s cricket at Hurlingham’), while a photograph taken during World War I (below) shows a ladies’ cricket match on the polo ground being watched by convalescing soldiers, who were admitted to the Club grounds free of charge.

Members could officially don their whites in 1951, when Hurlingham finally got its own cricket ground. It was the idea of the Chairman, Charles Norton, to turn the former pony exercise ground into a cricket field, at a cost of £494. The ground was opened on 16 June 1951 by Sir Pelham ‘Plum’ Warner (affectionately known as ‘the Grand Old Man’ of English cricket) and a match took place between the Butterflies and RH Cobbold’s XI.  

Members could officially don their whites in 1951, when Hurlingham finally got its own cricket ground

Within just a few years, anything up to 45 matches were being played in the season. In June 1953, Eric Warburg co-organised a ‘cricket week’ at the Club to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Nomads, and also found time between overs to marry Austrian ski champion and teacher, Lotti Smith. As Eric himself put it: ‘I played cricket on the Monday, the Tuesday, the Wednesday, the Thursday: I got married on the Friday and played cricket on Saturday and Sunday!’ Warburg remained actively involved in cricket and several other Club sports until the late 1980s and also served on the Main Committee.

The Club has attracted its fair share of celebrity players over the years, including guest appearances from former England Greats David Gower and Allan Lamb against Queen’s Club in 1986 and Barbadian notables Peter Lashley, Sir Garfield Sobers and Charlie Griffith against the Lords and Commons XI in 1990. There have been losses too: in 1966 the old, thatched cricket pavilion was destroyed by fire, and many members will remember the 275-year-old copper beech tree which graced the cricket field until its removal due to decay in 1998. The tree features in Julian Barrow’s beautiful painting of the cricket field, presented to the Club by E Anslow-Wilson in 1989, which now hangs in the Polo Bar.

From its origins as a staff social event to the thriving part of the Club’s sporting calendar it is today, cricket at Hurlingham has a heritage which goes back further than many realise!

CLARE BUTTON, CLUB ARCHIVIST