First Match at the Saffrons, Eastbourne — 1832

Sussex was already a cricketing county of the first rank by 1830, with William Lillywhite and Jem Broadbridge driving the roundarm revolution. Eastbourne, then a small parish, was developing rapidly under the patronage of the Cavendish family.

Eastbourne in the 1820s was still a string of separate villages on the South Downs. The Saffrons, a level area of about ten acres on the edge of the parish, had been used for grazing and as a saffron field — the crop that gave the ground its name. By the early 1830s the rapidly growing seaside town had a cricket-playing community, and on a date in the summer of 1832 (the precise day is lost; surviving references in the Sussex press place it in August) the first match was played there. The fixture was between local sides; the score is not preserved. What matters is the date, because the Saffrons has been used for cricket every summer since, making it one of the half-dozen oldest continuously used grounds in the country. Eastbourne Cricket Club was formally constituted in 1851 and took the Saffrons as its home; Sussex began to play county matches there in the 1880s. The ground today retains its open Sussex Downs aspect — no permanent stands, the pavilion at one end, the town pressing close on the other sides.

The Saffrons grew into a regular Sussex out-ground and a favourite of touring sides. The Eastbourne Festival of the late nineteenth century drew W.G. Grace and the leading professionals of the day. Modern Sussex still occasionally play county fixtures at the ground.