<------- Page navigation 

1884 and all that

A short version of a very long history

Alvanley Cricket Club was founded in 1884. 
We know that because it is on the badge of every item of clothing worn by the modern player. There is though evidence of cricket at Alvanley many years before.

Even 21 years before the club was founded, this clipping shows that the mighty Alvanley was too strong for a haplass Tarporley side. This fixture though was no coincidence. Back in the 1800s there was a clear link between the two villages. The wealthy land-owning family the Arderns hailed from Tarporley but owned swathes of land in Alvanley. There are echos of this running through Alvanley's history. From 1932 to 1949, Captain HR Baillie Hamilton Ardern was the Club's President and a more recent echo can be found in the nearest residential road to the ground - Ardern Lea which was built in the early 1970s. The Britland family still visit the club occasionally!
Back to the past! The first pictorial evidence of the club dates back to the turn of the 20th Century. The pictures below are incredible in their survival as much as their content. 
The image of a field with cows is the site of the current equipment shed and is looking back at the Vicarage. The photo is thought to date from around 1900. The following image of a team comes with a scorecard from 1900 (please make a note of the middle row, second from the right. the next image shows the players rolling the pitch in their whites, thought to be in 1900 also. The next picture on the loop is a team picture from 1907. The two umpires look like they should be opening the bowling. THE SIZE OF THEM!!!

Back to the man in the middle row. A scorecard shows a player called Walker playing for Alvanley. For anyone who played with or against Adrian Walker in the 80s and 90s - you can surely see his face in this likely ancestor?

More photos emerge from the early 1900s. 
Top left shows the Alv in 1900 and Top right - an early pavilion in 1909. Bottom right is the same pavilion on a photo dated at 1920 and then Bottom right.....an interesting one. The gent driving the carriage is Alfred Webster from a (still to this day) local farming family. He is pictured outside the White Lion with his horse called Blue Peter. Alfred would take the players in (a larger one than the one in the picture!) a carriage, pulled by poor Blue Peter, to away games, The carriage even had a name - The "Bassonette Wagonette" 
More horse facts!! This horse was multi-talented. He was clad in leather shoes and tasked with pulling the roller to flatten the pitch!
Another early century gem is the image below. This was found in a Birkenhead newspaper (no longer to hand). The article from 1910 featured the Alvanley team in a club in Birkenhead, dispensing final best wishes to a team mate who was emigrating to Boston! (Boston USA, not the one near Newcastle on Tyne)
That is it.............for a while. Very little has survived from a pictorial point of view until the 1960s.
We do have some snippets from these interwar and post war years though. We know who the club officials were and who scored the most runs and took the most wickets. The club has minutes and scorebooks that span these times and shed light on what the club was up to back in the day. The following images capture some of the names that shone in these olden days up to 2013.
The war years were tenuous for the club with a last minute reprieve for the ground saving it from become a vegetable plot for the war effort.
The 1960 saw a change at Alvanley as the club went from playing a regular fixture list of friendlies to entering league cricket. 
The next image shows what league the 1st XI played in and their position that year along with any (scant) cup success up to 2015
Despite wider ownership of cameras in the 60s there is only one image that has survived the decade. It does though give us the first glance of the remarkable Fred Noden. Fred passed away in 2006, Alvanley President at the time, but his name lives on. The newly roofed, furnished and decorated pavilion was dedicated to him the following year and his bench still overlooks the cricket at the Alv. Fred is displaying the famous Alvanley double teapot back left. His remarkable life story unfolded in front of a packed church during his memorable funeral. He rarely missed a Chester FC game, he cut the grass at the church, ran a farm, rang the bells, did all manner of mowing at the Alv and, when at Octel, was in a team that that created unleaded petrol. He still found time to serve the club as Secretary for 51 years. This feat was honoured by the ECB when he was summoned to Lords
All Change in the 80s
With the 70s being even sparser, we turn to the 80s. This was quite a decade for the club. The trend of league positions in the 70s shows an upward curve, indicating the the club was growing stronger. This was borne out in the 80s as in 1980, having spent many years based in a pavilion in the corner of the ground between the houses and the field, the club members went about building their own pavilion! This ambitious project took four years and was indeed timebound as the Club's Centenary was fast coming round in 1984 and would have been something of a damp squib if the events were hosting on a building site. Recent history tells us that the project succeeded and the Centenary was a huge success. The next set of photos show how the pavilion began with a significant cut into what was a croft and then the various stages of putting together and significantly modifying barracks number 69 from an army camp in Shropshire.
1984, The Centenary
With the pavilion finished, the committee went about the final preparation for the Club's Centenary celebrations. The Sun shone and a Cricket Week took place with cricket on the ground every day during the week. The highlight was a game against a Pakistan XI that included a number of test players.
Photos to be added
The 1990s under the Chairmanship initially of Chairman and ex-Cheshire player John Reidford, saw the club kick on again. With fabulous ground and enviable pitches, the club succeeded in its application to join the Cheshire County League after a long run of finishes at or near to the pinnacle of the Cheshire League (forever known as the Mellor Braggins!).
Some memorable wins against esteemed clubs like Alderley Edge and Bowdon saw the club establish itself in the these top echelons and as reorganisation took place, Alvanley found itself in Division 2. An outstanding season in 1998 saw promotion to Division 1 and the Boughton Hall KO trophy followed in the 1999. The club took 'Most Improved' in that 1998 season and in 2000 the pinnacle of 5th place in Division 1 was reached. Left arm spinner Robin Fisher had become a Cheshire regular but this success saw him tempted away to loftier clime's as Bootle proved too tempting. This signaled a decline as 3 relegations happened in 4 years. 
Chris Fletcher was tasked as the new Chairman with turning fortunes around and by the mid-2000s a promotion to Cheshire League 1 gave a hint of good times ahead. The Division 1 finishes became better with each year that passed. A stunning League Cup win in 2009 will live long in the memory but the icing on the cake for this period was the incredible 2011 season. The 1st XI went the whole season unbeaten, winning the league and setting a league points record in the process. More importantly, they were back in the County League
It isn't really history to talk beyond those years, that is for someone else to do in the future. They will have much to talk about though as the club not only maintained its berth in the County League but went on to produce the best bowler in the World, a full County player and increasing representation in district and county age group teams from the club's junior players.  Women and Girls teams that have emerged on the back of Sophie Ecclestone's rise to stardom, the increasing standards of the clubs facilities and burgeoning social side. Maybe these will form part of this page by 2030?
Share by: