» Goods brought to your door is not such a recent innovation
WHICH sport would you say has been played for longer than any other in Gloucestershire? Golf could be a good bet. A golfer is depicted, stick in hand, in Gloucester Cathedral’s Crecy window and he’s been there, poised to thwack the ball, since about 1350.
Bowls is another contender. In medieval Tewkesbury apprentice monks at the Benedictine monastery, who were actually called oblates and novices, played the game on a green that stood behind the Bell Hotel in Church Street.
It was surrounded by a yew hedge, some 15 feet high and about the same in thickness that was planted to shelter the green from south westerly winds that blew across the Ham.
After the dissolution of the monasteries the bowling green was taken over as a town amenity and in 1828 became home to the newly founded Tewkesbury Bowling Club, which is the second oldest in Gloucestershire.
The longest established in the county and some say in England is the Falcon Club in Painswick with records that date back to the mid 16th century.
Tewkesbury’s green was reputed to be one of the best for miles around.
So much so that trade directories well into the 20th century referred to the Bell and Bowling Green Hotel.
Teams from as far afield as Oxford, Birmingham and beyond came to coax their biased bowls across the well manicured sward.
Tewkesbury Bowling Club relocated to Gander Lane in 1975 and the town’s historic bowling green at the Bell was built on in 1984.
Alf Dipper, the Deerhurst born cricketer who played for Gloucestershire between 1908 and 1932 and also appeared in a Test for England against Australia at Lord’s in 1921, was a noted bowls player and familiar with the Tewkesbury green.
Another cricketer who was highly regarded for his skills on the bowling green was Tom Goddard.
A remarkable bowler both with the red leather ball and the larger wooden one, Tom played in 558 matches for Gloucestershire CCC and founded a successful furniture business in the city when he retired from the game.
W G Grace, though principally remembered for his feats with cricket bat and ball while playing for Gloucestershire and England, was a keen bowls player.
Besides being in the county bowls side, WG Grace was a founder of the English Bowls Association and was its first president from 1903 to 1905.
He also organised the first international bowls tournament, which took place between England and Scotland.
A 1924 guide to Gloucester tells us that “Eleven first class greens are actually in use at the present time in the city. It will be see at a glance, therefore, that devotees of this fine game cannot complain of the facilities offered and visitors to the city are assured of a very hearty welcome should they desire to join with the local players at any time”.
Two sea-washed turf greens were established at the Spa in the 1920s when Gloucester club members Wallace Harris, A D Lansley and H J Balchin were mainstays of the England team.
Croquet is nothing like as old as golf or bowls, but remains a sport with strong local connections.
Cheltenham Croquet Club is home to the game’s national HQ and more tournaments, including internationals, are staged at the Old Bath Road ground than anywhere else in the country.
The town’s club was founded in 1869,
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about the same time as Brighton’s and the All England Club at Wimbledon, but croquet had been played informally in the town before that.
It was the pastime of people in the area with the time and money who held tournaments in their gardens.
One of them was Walter Jones Whitmore (who was baptized Walter Whitmore Jones, incidentally, but changed the order to sound, he thought, more distinctive) of Chastleton House, near Stow on the Wold.
He assured himself a place in the history of the game by formalising its rules and arranging Britain’s first open tournament, which took place in Evesham in 1867.
It’s said that the presence of the croquet club was instrumental in bringing GCHQ to Cheltenham.
Edgar Jackson was a civil servant charged with the task of finding a new home for the agency when it moved from Bletchley Park via London after the Second World War.
Jackson was a keen croquet player and knew Cheltenham because of the eminence of its club.
There happened to be suitable
accommodation in the town at Benhall and Oakley in premises occupied during the war years by the American Forces of Supply and, to cut the story short, GCHQ relocated to Cheltenham in 1953.
Incidentally, when he retired, Edgar Jackson went on to win the British Men’s croquet championship twice and the club stages a tournament in his name to this day.
The picture of Edgar Jackson appears in “Cheltenham in the 1950s” by Peter Gill, published in 1996 by Sutton Publishing.