The Ashes Urn — Rupertswood Presentation, 1882-83

Sir William Clarke had been knighted in 1882 and was one of the wealthiest men in the Australian colonies. Rupertswood was his Sunbury estate, complete with private railway station, conservatory, and a cricket ground used for entertainment of touring sides. Lady Janet Clarke was a noted hostess; Florence Morphy, then in her early twenties, was the family's resident music teacher.

Bligh and his team arrived at Rupertswood on Christmas Eve 1882 for a few days of social cricket before the official Test programme resumed. The Sporting Times obituary was a topic of constant dinner-table joking. The Clarke ladies decided to materialise the joke.

Sir William Clarke, the largest landowner in Victoria, hosted Bligh's England side at Rupertswood — a Gothic-revival mansion north-west of Melbourne — over Christmas 1882 and again at Easter 1883. A scratch cricket match was arranged on the lawn. The Clarke ladies, including Sir William's wife Lady Janet Clarke and the family's young Tasmanian-born music teacher Florence Morphy, decided to extend the running joke about the Sporting Times obituary into a physical token.

A small terracotta perfume jar (the design is consistent with mid-Victorian small-bore funerary urns made for keepsake cremated remains) was filled with what was probably the burnt remains of a bail used in the lawn match. A red velvet bag was sewn to hold it. According to most sources the first presentation took place at Christmas 1882 and was treated as a private joke; a second, more formal presentation occurred at Easter 1883 with a six-line verse pasted to the urn.

The urn itself measures 10.5 cm tall. The verse, written in copperplate, reads:

'When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn, Studdy, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return, The welkin will ring loud, The great crowd will feel proud, Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn, And the rest coming home with the urn.'

Bligh fell in love with Florence Morphy during the tour; they married in February 1884. He brought the urn back to England as a personal possession. It sat at the Bligh family home (later Cobham Hall in Kent) for the next 44 years, never publicly displayed.

“When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn, Studdy, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return.”

“A tiny silver urn, containing what they termed 'the ashes of Australian cricket.'”

The urn never travelled with Test sides. From 1883 to 1927 it sat in private possession; from 1927 to the present it has lived at the MCC Museum at Lord's, leaving the building only twice for special exhibitions in Australia (in 1988 and 2006-07). For everyday Ashes purposes, a Waterford crystal replica is awarded to the winning captain. The original is too fragile to travel.

Florence Morphy outlived her husband by seventeen years, dying in 1944. She made her gift of the urn to MCC in 1929; her gesture is the reason the urn sits at Lord's today.