Cricket in the Early 1900s

[LENGTH:2mins 15secs Reading Time]

What was cricket like at Chipping Sodbury in the early 1900s? Someone who was well equipped to provide the answer was Mr. Frank Shipp of The Ridings whose cottage used to adjoin the cricket field. He watched the varying fortunes of the Club almost as far back as the turn of the century and he and his wife were the Club's most faithful supporters back in 1960, watching play at The Ridings from the garden seat outside their cottage.

Mr. Shipp remembered, for instance, Dr. W. G. Grace playing on The Ridings. "That would be in the days of Will and Sam Turner" he recalled. "My mother used to serve teas for the players in the cottage - ld. (5p) for a cup of tea, 1d. for a slice of bread and 1d. for a home-made cake. She used to sell ginger beer to the nippers at a 1d. a bottle. And I can remember Jack Weare who used to make sure that nobody went out without paying."

In those days, there used to be a wooden pavilion where the present one now stands. That was when The Ridings was an open expanse of land where the cattle wandered at will, grazing on the cricket field. Horses eventually roamed inside the pavilion and it very soon disintegrated.

The playing pitch itself was so enclosed by a fence as to allow sheep to graze on it but prevented cattle from trespassing on the "square". Not that cricketers of those days paid a great deal of attention to the actual playing area apparently for Mr. Shipp recalls: "Tommy Hawkins who used to work in Dr. Alfie Grace's stables would come up to The Ridings on the morning of the match and cut a wicket where they would play in the afternoon."

Players used to arrive for a match, already changed, either on foot or by bicycle. Besides the brothers Will and Sam Turner and Jack Weare, Mr. Shipp readily recalls some of the other players of that era such as E. A. Freeman, who was head teacher at the National School in Chipping Sodbury, G. E. Jotcham and R. McCarragher, J. H. Bennett and Alfie Dando ("He was a good wicket-keeper, standing right on top of the stumps-and he never missed a chance").

There was another Club stalwart in the person of A. E. A. Searle. and Mrs. Shipp can recall a rather remarkable incident which occurred during one match at The Ridings concerning him. She was wheeling a pram over the footpath, which, in those days, led from The Ridings cottages across the cricket field to the Wickwar road. Chipping Sodbury were batting and Mr. Searle was at the wicket. He made a huge hit-and the ball landed in the pram without hurting its occupant, Mrs. Shipp's young son, Leslie. "They stopped the play and came over and apologised" she recalled.