Greatest Cricket Moments

Earliest Documented Cricket at Charterhouse School — 1835

1835-07-10n/aCharterhouse house match, summer 18351 min readSeverity: Mild

Summary

The earliest documented cricket match at Charterhouse School — then on its London Smithfield site — was an inter-form fixture played in the summer of 1835. Charterhouse cricket had been informal through the late eighteenth century; the 1835 match is the earliest with surviving documentation in the school's records. Charterhouse would, by the late nineteenth century, become a notable cricketing school.

What Happened

Charterhouse, founded 1611, occupied its London Smithfield site through the nineteenth century until the move to Godalming in 1872. Cricket had been played on the school's small London grounds from at least the 1810s, but the inter-form match recorded in the master's diary for 7 July 1835 is the earliest preserved. Cricket at the Smithfield site was constrained by space; the post-1872 move to Surrey gave the school proper grounds.

Timeline

1611

Charterhouse founded

Jul 1835

Earliest documented cricket fixture

1872

School moves to Godalming, Surrey

⚖️ The Verdict

The earliest documented cricket at one of England's historic public schools.

Tags

#roundarm-era#early-victorian#charterhouse-school#school-cricket#london#1835#iconic-moment

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