Lord's
Lord's Cricket Ground, better known as Lord's, is a cricket venue at St John's Wood, historically in Middlesex and now in the City of Westminster, London NW8. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club and serves as the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and Wales Cricket Board, ICC Europe and, until August 2005, the International Cricket Council.
Lord's is widely referred to as the "home of cricket" and houses the world's oldest sporting museum.
Lord's today is not on its original 18th-century site; it is the third of three grounds which Thomas Lord established between 1787 and 1814. His first ground, now referred to as Lord's Old Ground, was where Dorset Square now stands. Lord's Middle Ground was in use from 1811 to 1813, before being abandoned for the construction of Regent's Canal which carved its way through the outfield. Lord's present ground is about north-west of the previous Middle Ground site. The ground can hold 31,100 spectators, its capacity increasing between 2017 and 2022 as part of MCC's ongoing redevelopment plans.
History
Background
Acting on behalf of members of the White Conduit Club underwritten by George Finch, 9th Earl of Winchilsea & Nottingham and Colonel the Hon. Charles Lennox, Thomas Lord opened his first cricket ground in May 1787 on Dorset Fields, a site leased from the Portman estate. White Conduit Club members, discontent with the ground maintenance of White Conduit Fields, moved from Islington to Marylebone soon afterwards reconstituting themselves as Marylebone Cricket Club. The establishment of Lord's new ground was a welcome prospect offering more privacy for its members, with White Conduit Fields considered too far from London's fashionable Oxford Street and the West End. The first match played at the new ground saw Middlesex play Essex. In 1811, feeling obliged to relocate because of a rise in rent, Lord removed the turf to a nearby interim site. The Middle Ground lay on the route decreed by parliament for the Regent's Canal, in addition to its location being unpopular with patrons.Lord's Middle Ground's tenure on the Eyre family estate being short-lived, Colonel Henry Samuel Eyre offered another plot nearby, where Lord was to relay his cricket turf. The new ground at St John's Wood, leased from the Eyres, previously featured a duck pond and was situated on an incline, hence the Lord's pitches famous slope, which at the time was recorded as sloping down from north-west to south-east, though in actuality the slope is. The new ground was opened in the 1814 season, with MCC playing Hertfordshire in the first match at Lord's on 22 June 1814.
Early years
Lord's Tavern was built in 1813–14, followed by a wooden pavilion in 1814. First-class cricket was first played on the present ground in July 1814, with the MCC playing St John's Wood Cricket Club. The first century to be scored at the ground in first-class cricket was made by Frederick Woodbridge for Epsom against Middlesex, with Epsom's Felix Ladbroke recording the second century in the same match. The annual Eton v Harrow match, which had first been played at Lord's Old Ground in 1805, returned to the present ground on 29 July 1818. From 1822, the fixture became almost an annual event at Lord's.Lord's witnessed the first double-century to be made in first-class cricket when William Ward scored 278 for the MCC against Norfolk in 1820. The original Lord's Pavilion, which had recently been renovated at great expense, was destroyed by fire on the night of 28 July 1825, following the first Winchester v Harrow match which had been completed that day. MCC's records and archives, including countless unique documents, were lost in the fire. The Pavilion was promptly rebuilt by Lord. In 1825, the future of the ground was placed in jeopardy when Lord proposed redeveloping the ground with housing at a time when St John's Wood was seeing rapid development. This was prevented by William Ward, who purchased the ground from Lord for £5,000. His purchase was celebrated in the following anonymous poem:
The first University Match between Oxford and Cambridge was held at Lord's in 1827, at the instigation of Charles Wordsworth, establishing what would be the oldest first-class fixture in the world until 2020. The ground remained under the ownership of Ward until 1835, after which it was handed over to James Dark. The Pavilion was refurbished in 1838, with the addition of gas lighting. Around this time Lord's could still be considered a country ground, with open countryside to the north and west. Lord's was described by Lord Cottesloe in 1845 as being a primitive venue, with low benches put in a circle around the ground at a good distance providing seating for spectators. Improvements to the ground were gradually made, with the introduction of a telegraph scoreboard in 1846. The Pavilion was extended on its north side in 1848 with an annex providing a separate entrance to the cricket field for professional players. In the same year scorecards were introduced for the first time, from a portable press, and drainage was installed in 1849–50.
An Australian Aboriginal cricket team toured England in 1868, with Lord's hosting one of their matches to a mixed response, with The Times describing the tourists as "a travestie upon cricketing at Lord's" and "the conquered natives of a convict colony". Dark proposed to part with his interest in the ground in 1863, for the fee of £15,000 for the remaining years of his lease. An agreement was reached in 1864, with Dark, who was seriously ill, selling his interests at Lord's for £11,000. The landlord of the ground, Isaac Moses, offered to sell it outright for £21,000 in 1865, which was reduced to £18,150. William Nicholson, who was a member of the MCC Committee at the time advanced the money on a mortgage, with his proposal for the MCC to buy the ground being unanimously passed at a special general meeting on 2 May 1866. Following this purchase, a number of developments took place. These included the addition of cricket nets for members to practice and the construction of a grandstand designed by the architect Arthur Allom, which was built in the winter of 1867–68 and also provided accommodation for the press. The stand was funded by a private syndicate of MCC members, purchased by the club in 1869. The wicket at Lord's was heavily criticised in the 1860s due to its poor condition, with Frederick Gale suggesting that nine cricket grounds out of ten within 20 miles of London would have a better wicket; the condition was deemed so poor as to be dangerous that Sussex refused to play there in 1864.
Continued developments
By the 1860s and 1870s, the great social occasions of the season were the public school match between Eton and Harrow, the Varsity Match between Oxford and Cambridge, and the Gentlemen v Players, with all three matches attracting great crowds. Crowds became so large that they encroached on the playing area, which necessitated the introduction of the boundary system in 1866. Further crowd control measures were initiated in 1871, with the introduction of turnstiles. The Pavilion was expanded in the mid-1860s and shortly thereafter it was decided to replace the original tavern with a new construction commencing in December 1867. At this time a nascent county game was beginning to take shape. With Lord's hosting more county matches, the pitches subsequently improved with umpires overseeing their preparation.Middlesex County Cricket Club, which had been founded in 1864, began playing their home games at Lord's in 1877 after vacating Prince's ground in Chelsea, which had been considered a serious rival to Lord's given its noble backers. In 1873–74, an embankment was built which could accommodate 4,000 spectators in four rows of seats. Four years later a new lodge and was constructed to replace an older lodge, along with a new workshop, stables and a store room at a cost of £1,000. To meet the ever-increasing demand of accommodating more spectators, a temporary stand was constructed on the eastern side of the ground. After many years of complaints regarding the poor condition of the Lord's pitch, the MCC took action by installing Percy Pearce as Ground Superintendent in 1874. Pearce had previously held the same position at the County Ground, Hove. His appointment vastly improved the condition of the wicket, with The Standard describing them as "faultless".
The Australian cricket team captained by Dave Gregory first visited Lord's on 27 May 1878, defeating their MCC hosts by 9 wickets. This was considered a shock result and established not only the fame of the Australian team, but also the ongoing rivalry between England and Australia. Lord's hosted its first Test match during The 1884 Ashes, becoming the third venue in England to host Test cricket after The Oval and Old Trafford. The match was won by England by an innings and 5 runs, with England's A. G. Steel and Edmund Peate recording the first Test century and five-wicket haul at Lord's respectively.
As part of the Golden Jubilee Celebrations for Queen Victoria in 1887, the Kings of Belgium, Denmark, Saxony, and Portugal attended Lord's. It was noted that none of them had any grasp of cricket. In the same year Lord's hosted the MCC's hundredth anniversary celebrations, with MCC playing a celebratory match against England. With only a two-tiered covered grandstand and both increasing membership and spectator numbers, it was decided to build a new pavilion at a cost of £21,000. Construction of the new Lord's Pavilion, which was designed by Thomas Verity, took place in 1889–90. The pavilion it replaced was relocated and painstakingly rebuilt on an estate in Sussex, where it lived out its days as a glorified garden shed. Soon after this, the MCC purchased the land to the east, known today as the Nursery Ground; this had previously been a market garden known as Henderson's Nursery which grew pineapples and tulips. The ground was subsequently threatened by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway's attempts to purchase land in the area for their line into Marylebone Station. After considering the company's offer, the MCC relinquished a strip of land bordering Wellington Road and was given in exchange the Clergy Orphan School to the south. In order to facilitate the railway into Marylebone Station, the Nursery Ground had to be dug up to allow tunnels to be built between 1894 and 1898 using the cut-and-cover method. Once completed the MS&LR Company laid a new pitch.
It was rumoured that subsequent tunnelling under Wellington Road provided the banking for the Mound Stand, which was constructed in 1898–99 on an area previously occupied by tennis and rackets courts. The rapid development of Lord's was not well met by some, with critics mooting Thomas Lord would "turn in his grave" at the ground's expansion. 1899 saw Albert Trott hit a six over the Pavilion while playing for MCC against the touring Australians, remaining as of the only batsman to do so. The Imperial Cricket Conference was founded by England, Australia and South Africa in 1909, headquartered at Lord's.
Lord's hosted three of the nine Test matches for the ill-fated 1912 Triangular Tournament which was organised by the South African millionaire Sir Abe Bailey. The ground's centenary was commemorated in June 1914 with a match between MCC, whose team was selected from the touring party from England's recent tour of South Africa, and a Rest of England team. The Rest of England won the three-day match by an innings and 189 runs. Lord's was requisitioned by the Army during the First World War, accommodating the Territorial Army, Royal Army Medical Corps and Royal Army Service Corps. Both cooking and wireless instruction classes were held at the ground for military personnel. Once the RAMC departed, the War Office used the Nursery Ground and other buildings as a training centre for Royal Artillery cadets. The Pavilion and its Long Room were used throughout the war for the manufacture of hay nets for horses on the Western Front. Though requisitioned, Lord's held several charity cricket matches during the war, featuring military teams from the various dominions of the British Empire. These matches were well attended and one such match in 1918 between England and the Dominions was attended by George V and the Duke of Connaught.