League Photos

League Photos

Incorporated 1922

League Photos

Incorporated 1922

The League Management

88^thYear Incorporated 1922

View clockwise from Number 1

This is just a cuddly re-imagining of The Management. The reality is far too terrible to contemplate.

Below is the final of the Festival Cup in May 1954 (one month before yours truly was born!) This was played beside the Dane John monument in central Canterbury. It was played between the Canterbury British Legion and Post Office Telephones. For the record the British Legion won the match. It's interesting to note the number of women and children who are there. If any reader was at this match, could they let us know?

This pic is of Ted Long (74) playing at home for the White Hart in Canterbury in August 1954. They are playing against the Dolphin B team, in front of the camera of BBC Radio Newsreel reporter Douglas Brown. Ted would have been 42 when the League started, having been born in 1880. He certainly saw some changes in his lifetime. I'm grateful to Dave Cornfoot for digging these up.

45 years on, and this pic shows Ian Taylor of the Castle playing in the 1999 Skam Cup. Notice how he's made no effort to put on a tie, even though he knows there's a camera watching! I don't know, the kids these days! I'm grateful (?!) to Jeff Smisson for this.

Here is our game, played at Newington Butts (which is one of the roads leading to the Elephant & Castle in London). This picture was found and sent to us from a museum in Virginia (!) by an American friend of ours, by the name of Delos Wheeler.

Amazingly, here at the begining of 2009, we suddenly get more pics!. This pic was provided by Roy Mellick, and came from the Southwark Local History Library. As you can see, it's the same engraving as the one above, but on a page in a book this time, and with more information about it. It turns out that the people in the engraving are playing at the Black Prince trap ball ground. Nice to know it was being played on licensed premises then, too.

Here is a map of the day, again provided by Roy, showing the location of the Trap Ball Ground (just to the right of the centre of the map).

Here's a current map of the same area, to the same scale as near as possible. It looks as if the Trap Ball ground is now buried under the northern end of the Elephant & Castle shopping centre. What a grisly end!

And here's a satellite pic of the same area. Certainly a bit more biult up than it used to be. In fact, apart from the main thoroughfares, I can only find one side road that was there 220 years ago and is still there now.

This one blew me away! I'll let Roy give the details: I have an oil painting (see left) of my 2nd Great Grand Uncle John Mellick b.1788 - d.1837 in Bermondsey in which he appears to be playing Trap Ball. At the time of his birth they were playing Trap Ball in Newington Butts just down the road. John Mellick grew up to become a Felmonger in Bermondsey and had a yard and premises off Bermondsey Street. Wow. So, thanks to Roy, not only do we have a pic, but we actually know who the subject is. Notice also the similarity in the style of these two paintings. Going by the age of the subjects, these were done within a few years of each other. There was a stylistic convention in force at the time that whenever you did paintings of people in the outdoors you should have trees behind and to the left, bare ground for the subject, something to fill the bottom right. Then you have the pic receding from bottom left to middle right, where you must see rolling hills and interesting clouds in the distance, all of which are invented, of course. Notice that young John is holding a 'short cricket bat', like the boy in the next pic.

Here is the other painting. The caption reads: "Trap Ball - From an original picture in the collection of George Watson Esq." The painting was by H. Thomson, and it also has the caption "London, published Jan 2, 1809 by the Engraver W. Say". Note the "cricket bat". Also note that the player is a child. The ball is the same colour as we used to use, too. Wonder where he got it? Can't see any bite marks from the pub dog, though. That's surprising, since the "pitch" doesn't look very...um ...flat! It's amazing to note that this painting was made only 71 years before Ted Long (above) was born, and only 30 years before the invention of photography. So only 2 lifetimes like his take us from this painting to the photo of him playing in 1954. And another one would take us another 20 years or so into the future. So 3 lifetimes gets us from this painting to men on Mars, perhaps. But we'll still be playing this game. Tradition is a wonderful thing! This and the other painting are the most important pics here, since they show the combination of both cricket and bat & trap. We are indebted to Martin Hoerchner for this one.

And here is a modern day photo of an 18th Century trap that turned up on the Antiques Roadshow in November 2001. I nearly fell off my chair when I saw it. I emailed the BBC and they graciously sent me a pic of it for use on the site. Three cheers for Auntie! (By the way, this was valued at £300!)

The Bat & Trap Ashes 2005. (Well, if the England team could do it, why couldn’t we?) Yes, there really is the ashes of a bat in there. And we won against the (mostly Aussie) opposition! Were they happy? Um.....no.

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