HISTORY OF THE BAT AND BALL GROUND, GRAVESEND

The Bat and Ball Ground has been the home of Gravesend Cricket Club since the Club's foundation during the winter of 1880/81. But the ground had a history for some years before then.

The Bat and Ball Ground in Wrotham Road, Gravesend dates from 1845. Its precise origin is not clear. The generally accepted version is that it began life as a private ground for the nearby Ruckland House, which survives, behind a more modern façade, as the Masonic Hall, just along Wrotham Road. The alternative version of the ground's origins is that it was purely a commercial venture between a Mr. Butcher and the Kent professional Tom Adams. Whatever the version it is Adams, a local man, a player very much a fixture in the Grand Old Kent XI of the time, who is the key figure in the ground's early history. The story goes that Adams spent three years in careful preparation, reportedly importing the turf from nearby Cobham Park. For many years thereafter he was the groundsman.

The first important or first-class match on the ground was in 1849 when Kent played William Clarke's wandering All-England XI, although Scores and Biographies does record a number of matches before that date.

The ground's history is marked by a continuous series of crises threatening its extinction. As early as 1852 it was being "re-opened" as the "new Race Ground" (athletics was a sport here from 1848). In the winter of 1853/54 the Earl of Darnley organised a number of prominent men of the area into forming the North Kent Cricket Club, the aim being to play matches at the Bat and Ball with the wider hope of resurrecting the declining fortunes that then afflicted the county side. The county games played there were not well attended.

Various changes of ownership followed, but an active period followed in the 1860s when the ground was rented by a Mr H.Bisley who promoted cricket to the degree that in the mid 1860s, before the formation of the current Kent County Cricket Club, the Bat and Ball was effectively the county ground.

The late nineteenth century was remarkable for the variety of sports played on the ground. Bisley had laid out a green for quoits and bowls. There were other more obvious alternatives to cricket like tennis, soccer and rugby. More unusual attractions were archery and golf-driving, while at one time a cycle track ringed the ground for penny-farthing racing. Even more bizarre was ice skating. During the ferocious winter of 1895 there was eight weeks of hard frost and either by accident or design the main stop-cock in Wrotham Road was kept running for three days and two or three inches of ice covered the whole ground.

A period of uncertainty in the early years of the twentieth century followed its purchase for building development. But led by the Earl of Darnley (the Hon. Ivo Bligh of "Ashes" fame), the Gravesend and North Kent Cricket and Sports Company was formed to purchase the ground to secure the future of cricket there, together with tennis and bowls (a bowls green was laid out in 1901).

Another crisis arose in 1918 by which time the aforementioned Sports Company was badly in debt and ground was under pressure to become a school playing field. A public subscription was raised and the ground was saved again and the Gravesend Cricket Club acquired the freehold of the ground in 1921.

The present pavilion dates from this time (1922), replacing a previous structure that dated from the 1850s. A covered stand, the Austin stand, was erected on the north side of the ground in 1934, while an impressive scoreboard was opened in 1936.

By 1957 the private company running the Bat and Ball had long been losing money. It was thus resolved that the Club now with its three sections cricket, tennis and bowls, become tenants of the company, accepting responsibility for the maintenance of the ground with a rent set at £200 a year. In 1959 the pavilion was restored helped by a gift from Mr Ron Billings, a local builder. The latter thereafter took a decisive part in the ground's affairs assisting the Club, now organised as the Gravesend Lawn Tennis and Bowls Club (1960) limited, by purchasing the ground. He then leased the Bat and Ball back to the Club on a 999 year lease at a rent of £1 a year. That remains the present arrangement.

The distinctive feature of the Bat and Ball has always been its size. It was once claimed to be the smallest first-class ground in the world. In its early days the playing area was marked out with flags at four corners so that straight drives to the boundary counted only three.

Kent used the ground for county matches between 1849 and 1971. 143 first-class matches were played during that period. For a period after World War II, the Bat and Ball had its own Kent county week, usually in late May.

The most famous innings played here was undoubtedly the 257 scored by W.G.Grace during his golden month of May 1895. On the field for very ball bowled in the match, Grace set the record for the highest first-class innings made here. Other players to particularly remember the ground were Frank Woolley and "Tich" Freeman who both performed well. Tony Lewis, the former England captain, made the highest first-class score of his career at the Bat and Ball. While one George Bonnor is recorded as making the biggest hit on the ground, over the workhouse which once stood to the north of the ground, around some 200 yards (163 metres).

Early visitors to the ground were the Australian Aboriginals, the first cricketers to tour England. The team actually landed at Gravesend and was taken for lunch at the Bat and Ball Inn, by the ground. The Bat and Ball thus became the first cricket ground ever seen by an overseas cricket touring team. They returned to play a match a few weeks later.

Other notable events here was the first ever women's international match in England - Kent v. Australia in 1937, and in 1951 Colin Cowdrey's first first-class fifty.

County cricket ended in 1971. The ground with its diminutive size and limited car parking could not compete with the demands of the modern age. Subsequently some of the ground's features including the Austin Stand and the scoreboard have been pulled down.

However cricket still thrives here. Having survived a history of crises, it survives an unpretentious, unique, perhaps under-valued piece of sporting history in a town not over-endowed with any other claims to sporting fame.