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.
Cricket was one of his passions. Local experts have him founding the Cuckoo Penners Cricket Club in Yatton in 1869 as a mid-week side and we can place him as being resident at Henley Lodge by 1877.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Penners may well have used the ground at Henley Lodge: according to an undated newspaper report from the early 1920s, “It is said that [Cuckoo Penners] played cricket on this ground (i.e. Henley Lodge) fifty or so years ago“. This places the Penners at Henley sometime during the 1870s, around the time of his residency there.
Yet more substantial plans were afoot. The first – 1877 – annual dinner of the Yatton cricket club is recorded by The Weston Mercury on 24 November that year. It notes the presence of ‘Mr Tankerville Chamberlayne of Cranbury-park near Winchester and Henley Lodge, Yatton, captain of the club’. There is reference too to Tankerville thanking a ‘Dr Hardman for allowing him to improve the cricket ground’. Dr Hardman’s residence, Cadbury House[1] – which Hardman bought in 1873 – may have included the area around Henley Lodge. So perhaps the improvements reflected the fact that Yatton’s more formal, weekend games would now be played there.
One of those took place the following year, 1878. The Clevedon Mercury of 6 July describes it as a Garden Party. ‘Tankerville Chamberlayne the much-loved occupier of Henley Lodge’, had arranged a match between Yatton and St Luke’s Southampton. Signs were placed directing people to his residence. ‘Altogether the garden party and cricket match at Henley Lodge, favoured with beautiful weather was a grand success’. This was proper Country House cricket. Three or four tents had been erected. Those entrusted with the catering had done their work well. And Tankerville carried his bat for a respectable seven. Fireworks and a supper for the ladies followed the match which Yatton won by an innings. A rumour at the end of The Mercury’s report that Mr Chamberlayne was to leave Yatton was the only sad note.
But perhaps the most prestigious game hosted at Henley took place in July 1879. The Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette was on hand as were other local papers to record the two-day match between Twelve Gentlemen of Somerset (or Somersetshire as it was known) and Twelve of Hampshire. Tankerville played – he could hardly be excluded from his own garden. The triumphal arches from the St Lukes game the previous year made a reappearance and we really get a feeling for the hospitality on offer.
‘Matches which are played in his grounds are looked forward to with the greatest pleasure not only by those who take part in the game but by the whole of the spectators as on all these occasions every comer has a hearty welcome and is pressed to partake of the generous hospitality of the host.’
After all that the match was terminated by a downpour later on the second day with Hampshire in much the stronger position.
Tankerville then appears to have left Henley Lodge, The Weston Mercury of 22 November 1879 recording his ‘coming departure from Yatton’ and the 1881 Census showing him and his family living at Whitchurch where they remained until moving to his pile at Cranbury Park in 1890.
Of interest to us is whether cricket continued at Henley Lodge. In that same Mercury piece from November it is noted that ‘he had made arrangements for the use of a capital field’ which suggests play on the Henley pitch ceased. I believe that this capital field was the new one laid out nearer the centre of the town.[2] Tantalising though is an 1883 photograph of the Yatton and Thornbury teams at ‘Yatton’ – tantalising because sitting cross legged in the front row is W.G. himself. Did he play at Henley Lodge? Certainly the Tankerville connection is there. The image references ‘Tankerville Chamberlayne, Hon President of Yatton CC’, but based on the sequence of events above it’s probably at the new town ground, not Henley.
[1] Now the Cadbury by Hilton Country Club
[2] The pitch is described in Yatton Yesterday No 3 1986 (page 20) and is known as ‘The Nurseries’.
Yatton V Thornbury at Yatton, September 22nd 1883
But that wasn’t the end of cricket at the house. That earlier 1920s quote about the Cuckoo Penners was reporting the move of Claverham CC to Henley Lane, the erstwhile Henley Lodge ground. Today Claverham (Yatton) Cricket Club still use it.
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