Catalogue for the auction of
Cricket, Football, Golf & Sporting Memorabilia

Warwickshire Gentlemen Cricket Club 1890s-1920s. An excellent selection of original club fixtures cards, membership tickets etc. contained in a ‘Best Steel Deed Box’ with the name ‘Warwickshire Gentlemen Cricket Club’ painted to the front. A good number of fixture cards relate to the Warwickshire Gentlemen C.C. for seasons 1900, 1902 and 1904-1913 (some years duplicated), and ‘List of Members’ booklets for seasons 1901, 1902, 1903 and 1906. Additional folding cards and leaflets provide information relating to the original formation of the Club in 1872 by ‘the late Lord Willoughby de Broke and the late Baron Conyers’. A folding card produced in 1903 describes the formation of the Club in 1872 with a lease of their ground from Lord Warwick, the Club considering itself to be a ‘pioneer of “County” cricket in this part of the world’. However the amateur club struggled with the introduction of professional players into the first-class game until, in 1898, the Club amalgamated with the Warwickshire Crusaders C.C. and subsequently prospered. The collection includes seven original candid photographs of players, the team and pavilion, and also a number of Warwickshire County Cricket Club folding membership tickets/ fixture cards for seasons 1903, 1904, 1907, 1909-1911 & 1913 and ‘Lady’s Tickets’ for 1910, 1911 and 1913, some of which were issued to ‘J. Mayfield’ of Coventry who served as a Committee member, Hon. Secretary and Captain of the Warwickshire Gentlemen C.C. and is named as such on the lists of officers on the Gentlemen Club fixture cards. It is therefore presumed that this selection came from Mayfield’s personal archive in his capacity as Club Secretary. A number of Club players also represented their county, including Frederick Dickens (Warwickshire 1898-1903) who was engaged as the Club professional in 1903, Alfred Glover (1895-1909), Frank Loveitt (1898-1905) and Edward Matheson (1899). Also included is a good selection of fixture cards from opposing clubs, most notably Friars C.C. of Derby 1898, 1904-1913, 1920 & 1921, and members’ handbooks for 1904, 1905 & 1906. Coventry and North Warwickshire C.C. membership tickets/ fixture cards for 1902, 1904, 1906, 1907 and 1909-1912, some issued to J. Mayfield. Leamington C.C. members’ cards for 1902, 1903,1906-1912, and Rules/ membership booklets for 1893 and 1895. Other clubs fixture cards featured, all from the same period, include Allersley Park, Blue Mantles, Bramley United, Cliffdown, Cryptics, Incogniti, Stratford-on-Avon, Wellesbourne etc. The steel containing box with some rusting and wear, the contents in good condition. An interesting archive of early Warwickshire cricket.