Sir William Pynsent was both a landowner and politician. He sat in the House of Commons between 1715 and 1722 and bequeathed his house, Burton Pynsent, to William Pitt the Elder. The latter, briefly Prime Minister in the late 1760s, duly inherited it in 1765 on Pynsent’s death. Pynsent had said, ‘‘I hope he will like my Burton estate, where I now live, well enough to make it his country seat’’. Well, he, Pitt, did after a fashion, living there on and off until his death in 1778. His widow remained at the estate until her own death in 1803. It was then split up and sold a couple of years later.
Image courtesy of authors of ‘Curry Rivel Past & Present’.
The buyer? A Colonel Pinney who paid £8,810 (over £900,000 today) for the house before it subsequently passed through a number of hands during the rest of that century. In that sense Pynsent is not unlike other Somerset Country Houses.
That’s where similarities end. Whilst an enthusiastic cricketing ‘Patron’ can usually be identified at other Country Houses it’s not immediately clear who was arranging matches here. Nor is it clear where they took place. This 1844-1888 map[1] indicates open ground immediately to the North East of the house, bottom left-hand corner. It remains a green, unwooded area on modern maps and could have been the site of the pitch. But Somerset expert Robert Dunning suspects that matches were played on the level ground near the Burton Pynsent Monument (centre, top of map) rather than near to the house.
[1] Image courtesy of Know Your Place.
Either way, it is 1850 when we see start to press reports of games at the House. The first of three matches between Burton Pynsent and The West Somerset County Cricket Club took place early in July that year. The Sherborne Mercury confirms that it had taken place at ‘the beautiful ground of the former’ and had resulted in a one wicket win for the home side.
The Burton Pynsent innings from that July match is shown here. Batting at number six is a W. Bagehot – caught by Watts first innings, LBW to him in the second – almost certainly Watson Bagehot cousin of Walter the Journalist and Economist[2].
[2]Walter Bagehot was an economist, political analyst, and editor of The Economist who was one of the most influential journalists of the mid-Victorian period.
Opening the batting, and also a first innings Watts victim, is The Rev W.R Newbolt a well-known local cricketer. Whilst Vicar of Somerton he had, in 1847, been weighing in on the arguments between the Established Church and those adopting the ultra-protestant view. ‘’Be prepared for a furious onslaught,’’ he writes to an acquaintance with an eye to the coming General Election.
Matches between these two sides sound as though they were evenly matched affairs. A second encounter, this time at Bridgwater, resulted in a tie, Louch, Pynsent’s tenth and final batsman, being run out, quite possibly going for the winning run.
So there must have been considerable anticipation for the ‘‘the third and decisive match’’ which took place in August that same year, 1850. The Mercury confirmed that the Burton Pynsent eleven ran out winners. We count six clergymen across the two elevens a not untypical total for the time.
The Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser was at Burton Pynsent a year later. In July it recorded The Vale of Taunton taking on the home side, with an unusually large party ’’[assembling] at Burton Pynsent Friday last’’. It notes a convincing win by the Vale – and relates how a Mrs Palmer, landlady of the Bell Inn, Curry Rivel, broke her leg when crossing one of the boundary ropes. Whether this took place during the dancing that followed the game or as part of an attempt to remonstrate with one of the players during it is not recorded. ‘’She is, since the accident, progressing to recovery’’ reassures the Advertiser.
Press reports then seem to stop with little mention of cricket thereafter although references to the ‘beautiful ground’ being used for other purposes continue. Maybe cricket was of less interest to Burton Pynsent’s subsequent residents.
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