A History of Cricket at King Edward's School, BIrmingham

7 Chapter Two THE MOVE TO EASTERN ROAD 1875-1873 One of the biggest mysteries about the early years of cricket at KES is where the matches were played. As Hutton comments, no governor had had the foresight to buy land in Birmingham for use as playing fields at a time when land was cheap. In 1838 four acres of School land at Holloway Head was leased to Birmingham Cricket Club, on condition that the boys should use it ‘occasionally’. Archbishop Benson recalled that ‘In my day, 1841-8, we had a very good cricket field at Monument Road bridge; it was a very small one but we thought it very good.’ This seems to have been on the site of Ledsam Street. Holt Caldicott, who left School in 1860, recorded: ‘I remember a school field on the north side of Reservoir Road, extending to the Reservoir. This would be about 1848 or 1850. As a very young boy I was allowed to walk through the gate and watch the play. The ground was shortly after cut up for building. In my own time, the cricket field was in Coventry Road, in the back of a public-house on the left-side going from town. It would not have been very far from St Andrew’s Church. My recollection is that it was a large and level field with a pavilion and I think it must have been rented for the School half-holidays, as my impression is that All- England and other matches were played there.’ This ground Hutton was unable to locate; however, match scores between 1852 and 1861 on Cricket Archive confirm that KES used a ground in Small Heath, and this must be the one referred to by Caldicott. It seems that it was no longer used after 1861. In November 1862, a playing field on the Rotton Park Estate was rented for £50 per annum, and it was used for ten years, during which time something like £200 was spent on it. Then it was sold to the railway company, amid bitter complaints in the School Chronicle. Napier Shaw, by his own account, leased a ground on his own initiative for the use of the School eleven he captained, and this was used for a season: this appears to have been in 1871. However, it is obvious that most of these arrangements were merely temporary affairs; there was no permanent ground, and this factor was clearly one very important reason for the decline of cricket at KES in the 1860s. In September 1872, the governors took a decisive step in securing the future of cricket at KES by taking the Eastern Road ground on a 99-year lease. Originally the lease was of eight acres, but there have been additions since and by the mid-twentieth century the acreage was double. The advantages of the Eastern Road ground were its shape (200 yards long by 150 broad), the fact that it was nearly level, and that, in the words of the School Chronicle for 1872, ‘omnibuses from the town pass both ways every half-hour, which gives it an advantage impossible to the old ground.’ (A further advantage later became apparent, when the new King Edward’s was built on an adjacent site in 1939-40.) So, from 1872 onwards, the School had a permanent ground on which to play and practise. There are some other signs of the beginning of a revival in 1872. The School Chronicle was inaugurated in March 1872, and ten issues appeared in this year. Issues nos 5