Bridport and cricket memories
Maura Naylor recalls summer days in rural West Dorset in the 1950s and shares the photographic contents of her mother’s Bridport scrap book.
Published in August ’17
Years ago we took a young French friend to a cricket match and she immediately fell madly in love with all the players. She swooned over them when they trooped out of the pavilion dressed in white. ‘Ah zey look so lovely!’ she gasped. ‘Such beautiful “creaketers”!’
Our nearest cricket pitch in the 1950s was the Symene Cricket Club, which lay in a little dip in the West Dorset hills entirely inaccessible by road. When the opposing team arrived by coach, they would have to leave it at the nearest pub, walk down a hillside and across a field, duck under some electric wire and skirt the bluebell wood.
We spectators usually came at it from the opposite direction, carrying everything three miles across fields, from bats, pads, blankets and sandwiches to crockery and the tea urn!
This stylised view of (the then) Bridport Harbour from 1825 was one of many pictures from the local area Maura’s mother had collected
Whether or not there was any play depended upon the vagaries of the weather. We didn’t listen to the BBC forecast for this, but rather we kept an eye on the scorer’s wife, a plump middle-aged lady who was absolutely indispensable to the team. She was like a replica of those small plaster figures that used to pop in and out of doors to tell you whether the sun was shining, or one of those black Welsh ladies whose cotton aprons turned pink at the slightest smell of rain. The method our cricket pitch Salome chose to deliver the forecast was – in the nicest possible way – how she used to take her clothes off. If she arrived garbed in grey plastic mac and plastic overshoes and kept them on, play was very doubtful and it was hardly worth setting up the tea urn. If she removed mac and shoe covers and appeared in her coat, play was assured. If she removed her coat and displayed her blue tweed suit, we were in for a sunny day; if she was seen peeling off her jacket and getting down to the first of her woollies, it was going to be very hot. If both cardigans and jumper came off, revealing her sleeveless blouse, it was so exceptional that the papers would announce
it as one of the most scorching days for
twenty years.
The street (West Allington) with the house and indeed room where Maura Naylor’s mother was born
Lying on the grass, with the heat of the sun pressing down upon one’s back, watching idly as Salome and the players divested themselves of more and more garments was an occupation in itself. Salome piled hers neatly on the bench beside her but the ‘creaketers’ threw theirs at Sid the umpire, who tied them around his neck and waist with his shooting stick sinking lower and lower into the pitch under the increasing weight.
One knew that unless they were off form, our main bowlers (Bert and my father) would demolish most of the visitors’ wickets, and that when Jack went into bat he would be still standing there – short of being struck by a thunderbolt – at dusk.
The SS Dunleith of Beaumaris ran aground off Ireland in 1929 in a storm, but was refloated the same month and years later came to West Bay
No-one in the onlookers tore their hair out or threw cans at those who scored a duck. The harshest reprimand, reserved for those who missed an easy catch at square leg, was a gentle roar in Dorset dialect of: ‘Wass on then, Jimmer lad? Thee cass’n see so well as cuss, cass?’ (‘You can’t see as well as you could, can you?’)
Our only accident in many years was when William took a ball in the face just above his eye and lay on the grass with a coat over him and his head swelling up like a purple pumpkin. He was back two weeks later, as good as new.
West Bay pictured in 1960
My sister and I, still at school, had secret crushes on three brothers – Dave, Bill and Donald – who were tall, tanned and muscular and had hair as gold as wheatfields. Unfortunately, they hardly noticed us and directed most of their attention to the delectable Lil. On the quiet, we were also admirers of Lil, who seemed to be the image of Marilyn Monroe: buxom, lipsticked and knowing. Although we didn’t know what knowing was, we knew she looked like she knew whatever it was you needed to know to be knowing. The players vied to sit next to her in the coach to away games and sang to her about the perils of ‘The foggy, foggy dew’ on the way home.
Looking down South Street (with the late, lamented Cross Keys pub on the left) one can see the cartwheel tracks on the road surface in this turn of the 20th century shot
When we were entertained to a feudal tea in the squire’s barn, it was always Lil who commanded the squire’s attention, perched up on the highest bale of hay, eating a damp and indifferent salmon paste sandwich with the greatest delicacy. When we played the RAF and it rained, it was Lil who was invited to join in their impromptu darts in the shelter of the Nissan hut. When we played the Royal Navy it was Lil who was allowed into the petty officers’ mess while we lesser, short-socked mortals were banished to the nearest beach to search for shells. Lil didn’t have to knit or make the tea or do anything everyday; she was just always ‘there’, sipping shandy and picking daisies and waiting for the annual dinner and dance so that she could drink champagne from the loving cup. We wondered whether that could be the source of her secret powers, but when my Father won the silver trophy and it came to our house for the year, my mother proceeded to destroy any aphrodisiacal effects it might possess by using it as a home for knitting needles and darning wool.
The Dutch sailing ship Neptunus from Groningen offloading lumber at West Bay in 1913
The cricket pitch went back to the cows decades ago. Another ground, blander, more accessible, was provided within easier reach of the outside world. Most of the atmosphere was lost but the timeless, rhythmic ‘thwack’ of ball on bat continues. As George Bernard Shaw said: ‘
The English invented cricket to give them an
idea of eternity.’
