Category: Country House Cricket

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’.

 Cricket at Butleigh Court is a success story. The first overs were bowled in the mid-nineteenth century and today, 175 years on, there is still no sign of stumps being drawn

The Court itself was constructed in 1845–51 replacing an earlier building on the same site burnt down, it is thought, in the previous decade. (Fire was the scourge of many country houses.)

Henley Lodge once sat at the south end of Yatton. Now submerged under a housing estate it’s one of a number of locations in the town that hosted cricket in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Running through much of that early history is Mr Tankerville Chamberlayne a character who lived a life as fascinating as his name. 

The Hon E. W. B. ‘Teddy’ Portman was the eldest of five surviving sons of the second Viscount Portman. He was heir to the extensive Portman Estates and moved into Hestercombe in December 1894 with his wife of two years, the Hon. Constance Mary Lawley (the House being ‘made over’ to him by his father). Conscious of his priorities Teddy soon became its cricketing patron.

Overlooked by most visitors to Barrington Court in Somerset is its cricket pitch. Today it is quiet and unused. But in the past, its champion, its enthusiast, was Colonel Arthur Lyle. Injured aged 35 at the Battle of Aubers Ridge in May 1915 he appears not to have returned to active service; maybe thoughts of cricket were a lifeline during unimaginably dark days.

Somerset Country Houses come in many forms. Some remain with their original family. Some are owned by the National Trust. Some have been divided into flats. And some are no more. Ashwick Grove falls into the last category.

This beautiful ground lies behind Watts House, now known as Cedar Falls. Watts House was built by the Winters family and was completed in 1831.the family lived there until about 1890.

Watts House (Cedar Falls near Bishops Lydeard) features greatly in the history of cricket with the County of Somerset and staged much ‘country house’ cricket rather than club or ‘Gents Players matches. There was never this distinction in country house matches (see Barry Phillips’s book on HT Stanley & Quantock lodge cricket).