For hundreds of years there was a single bridge over the River Trent,which gave the inhabitants of Nottingham access to the towns andvillages south of the county town

Peter Wynne-Thomas09-Feb-2009For hundreds of years there was a single bridge over the River Trent,which gave the inhabitants of Nottingham access to the towns andvillages south of the county town. An inn was built at the southernend of the bridge, so that travellers who arrived in the vicinity ofNottingham late at night, when the walled town was closed, could waitat the inn until entering the town in the morning.The inn was therefore not located in Nottingham but in the smallagricultural village of West Bridgford. When cricket developed into apublic spectacle in Nottingham during the latter half of the 18thcentury, the chief cricket ground was the grassed, levelled areainside the town’s oval race-course, on a large acreage of land called’The Forest’ about one mile north of the town. The first bona fideinter-county Nottinghamshire game was staged, against Sussex, on TheForest in 1835. The cricketers were unable to charge admission towatch this, and other major games, because The Forest was owned bythe Town Council.In December 1837, the captain and self-appointed manager of theNottinghamshire team, William Clarke, married the landlady of the innsituated to the south of the bridge over the Trent, and generallyknown as the Trent Bridge Inn. The following spring he laid a cricketground in the meadow attached to the inn. The meadow was bordered onone side by the road to Radcliffe on Trent and Grantham and on theadjacent side by the lane to West Bridgford church. The other twosides were bounded by hedges separating the meadow from the landbelonging to West Bridgford Hall, which could be seen across the fields.Clarke erected a close-boarded fence round his ground and using theinn as accomodation for the cricketers, arranged that all majormatches involving Nottinghamshire should use his ground, rather thanThe Forest.He found however that the number of games which drew crowds to hisTrent Bridge Ground was very limited. He tried a variety ofnon-cricketing spectacles with luke-warm results and in 1845 left theInn, which he gave over to his step-son, John Chapman, and went toLondon. Here he formed the subsequently famous All England Eleven andat last made a substantial living from organising matches all overBritain for his All England Eleven.Step-son, John Chapman, carried on with the business of the Inn andcricket ground, but had little more success than Clarke. He movedaway and another inn-keeper took on the lease. It was not until 1859that very much happened at the cricket ground – the occasional countygame and rent from two or three local cricket clubs, plus sundrynon-cricketing events. In 1859 however a local solicitor, JohnJohnson, took it upon himself to inject some sense and order into thehaphazard Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club. He induced thesubscribers to elect a proper committee, he arranged a fewinter-county games and he had built, at the back of the Inn, a singlestorey brick pavilion. In 1861 he introduced the idea of an EasterColts trial, in which 22 young players were invited to play a two-daygame against the Notts 1st XI and prizes were given for the bestbatting and bowling by a colt.It had been clear from William Clarke’s days in the 1830s that thecounty of Nottingham possessed some of the most talented cricketersin England. Johnson was keen to harness this ability. He wasfortunate that he had, in Clarke’s successor, George Parr, the bestbatsman in England, and in John Jackson the most feared of fastbowlers. Within a few years the county had wrested the title of’Champion’ county from Surrey and substantial profits were being madefrom the crowds who came to watch the Trent Bridge matches.In 1872 the county club were in a position to erect a much moreelaborate pavilion on the opposite side of the ground from the Inn.The successes continued, so much so that within ten years the newpavilion was found to be totally inadequate. The County Committeetook the lease of a further two acres at the rear of the pavilion andbuilt in 1886 the then largest pavilion in England – within tenyears, Lord’s, Old Trafford and The Oval had more than matched this however!The area of grass was large enough to allow the eastern side to beused by Notts County F.C. as their home ground and they built somestands on three sides of their football pitch in the 1890s. Thecricket club relied mainly on benches and tents, plus the newpavilion which had about 2,000 seats.All this changed when the Committee was granted the First Test matchof the 1899 season, against Australia. A covered semi-circle ofstands, with a new reporters’ box were built in 1898 and thefollowing winter. The wickets were pitched for this historic match insuch a way that the football stands could also be employed and thusthe whole ground was ringed with spectators’ accommodation. Acommodious ladies’ pavilion was also erected.In 1910 it was felt that the cricket and football seasons were toooverlapping to allow the football club to continue to rent a sectionof the ground and Notts County moved to Meadow Lane, the ground whichthey still occupy.Directly after the First World War, an opportunity arose for theCricket Club to purchase the freehold of the ground and the Inn – theMusters family of Colwick Hall owned the freehold of much of WestBridgford including the ground. The club bought the freehold, thenmanaged to sell the inn to a brewery for the same money as thefreehold of both inn and ground had cost the club. The brewery werehowever given the ground catering rights in perpetuity.Possessing the freehold, the County Club could now develop theground. It was a fortunate coincidence that the keenest supporter ofthe club and a committee member was the self-made millionaire, JulienCahn. Through his generosity the club built five large concretestands, two (West Wing and Radcliffe Road) being double storey. Healso financed a new indoor net at the rear of the pavilion.With the use of circles of benches on the grass round the boundaryand all the new stands, there was accommodation for about 30,000spectators. One estimate gave the record crowd as 35,000, but as clubmembers in those days were never counted when they entered the groundno precise figures are obtainable.During the Second World War, the Army occupied the pavilion using itas the central mail sorting office. Matches were still played on theground, the reporters’ accommodation being turned into a dressingroom. In the First World War the pavilion had been used as a militaryhospital. The only bomb damage inflicted on Trent Bridge in the1939-45 conflict was a direct hit on a single storey buildingadjoining the indoor nets, used by the local Boys Brigade.Apart from basic renovation and repair, the ground saw no post-warimprovements until 1956, when the Parr stand was built on the Westside. The stand was directly in front of an ancient elm, named Parr’sTree (George Parr was reputed to have regularly hit the ball intothis tree during his long career with Notts).The late 1960s saw Nottinghamshire, along with most other countyclubs struggling to make ends meet. The Committee decided thatdrastic measures were required and gained planning permission for amulti-storey office block in the north-east corner of the ground anda squash club in the south-east corner, adjacent to the main gates.Both these projects were completed in the early 1970s. The buildingof the office block meant the demolition of the Australian-stylescoreboard (erected in 1950) which occupied part of the office blocksite. A new semi-automatic board was built between the block and theplaying area.In 1979 the pavilion was renovated and a library formed out of partof the Long Room bar area; new reporters’ quarters were built, theold building being converted into executive boxes. The building ofthe office block with its necessary car parking had meant thedemolition of some of the concrete stands built in the inter-warperiod and, with the banning of the use of loose benches andspectators sitting on the grass, the maximum crowd accommodationdropped dramatically – the present figure being about 13,000.In the 1980s two new stands were erected – the William Clarke standat the back of the inn, which also housed larger press facilities,and the Larwood and Voce stand with a public house at the rear, nearthe indoor nets in the south-east corner.In the 1990s the old Ladies’ pavilion, which since the 1970s had beenconverted mainly into a restaurant, was demolished and a large threestorey stand built, the middle storey being a banqueting suite for200 diners.Currently planning permission has been granted for a three storeybuilding to replace the Radcliffe Road stand and its adjacentaccommodation. This scheme includes indoor nets, some overnighaccommodation for young players and an increase in seating capacityof about 2,000.The ground is considered by players and spectators to be one of themost pleasant in England, the architecture having been kept withinthe parameters set by the 1886 pavilion. The main problem forspectators, a problem which is a feature of several major grounds, iscar parking, but there are hopes of resolving this. The ground iswell served by public transport, the railway station being about 15minutes walk and buses from Nottingham city centre run at about fiveminute intervals. The ground can be approached by car from both theM1 and A1 without travelling through the Nottingham city centre.