Heroes who gave us days of free entertainment (
...if you could climb over the wall round the park
“The hairs on the back of my neck would stand up on end whenever he hit a massive six right out of the ground to land in the park the other side of the road. We were all in awe of him ...
Bristol author Jack Allen has been occasionally entertaining us with his memories of his Westonsuper-Mare childhood and the adventures of the Clevedon Road Gang. As the school holidays are soon upon us, he here remembers the Somerset cricketing heroes who would regularly thrill spectators at Clarence Park.
LUCKILY for the Clevedon Road gang an event took place during the Summer months that took us away from the usual routine of crab fishing, exploring and climbing trees. As wonderfully exciting these adventures were, it was nice to do something different and that difference came in the shape of a bat and a ball and cricket. Every August, County Championship cricket matches were held in Clarence Park, and large crowds would turn up to watch. Of course we wanted to support the Somerset team, so we made it our duty to climb over the high stone wall surrounding the park to get in for nothing to see them. An easy task for the older ones, but much more difficult for Richard, my five-year-old brother. Cricket wasn’t just a couple of hours of entertainment – the Weston Festival consisted of three County Championship matches being played in the park with each one scheduled to last three days. Nine whole days of free entertainment! Wonderful! Armed with cheese and tomato sandwiches in a paper bag, an apple and a bottle of water, we planned on staying all day and when the inevitable breaks in play occurred we had a choice of things to do. Walking round and round the ground searching for empty bottles of pop was always the favourite. In those days it was penny back on the bottle and once you’d collected eight empty bottles you had enough money to buy an ice cream or even a bottle of Tizer. Another activity that occupied our time were games of minicricket played with an empty bottle and a tennis ball. These games took place all around the ground and God help anyone who strayed onto the square to retrieve a ball! All the balls had to stay where they were until play resumed and then the umpires would throw them back into the crowd to whoever shouted the loudest. Sometimes our games of ‘tip and run’ were more exciting than the match itself and many a career best personal score was knocked up at this time. My 97 not out made against the bowling of my brother remains my highest score to this day! When we tired of collecting empty bottles and games of ‘tip and run’ there was yet another thing we could do; collecting the autographs of the players always gave us a buzz of excitement. The names of the Somerset players are as fresh today as when I got them to sign my book nearly seventy years ago - Harold Gimblett, Jonny Lawrence, Bertie Buse, M.M. Walford and of course the mighty Arthur Wellard. A huge cheer would erupt around the ground whenever Arthur Wellard went out to bat. He was one of the greatest strikers of a cricket ball the game has ever seen. His career spanned four decades and during that time he hit 561 sixes and twice hit five sixes in an over! The hairs on the back of my neck would stand up on end whenever he hit a massive six right out of the ground to land in the park the other side of the road. We were all in awe of him and to stand in front of the great man himself to collect his autograph was a privilege I’ll never forget. There were other characters in the team as well. Maurice Tremlett, a giant fast bowler with long blonde hair who ran in to bowl like a runaway train and Horace Hazell who was built and looked like a beetroot and could always be found in the beer tent, which surprisingly we kids were allowed in as well to collect autographs. Something that was normal then but today we find very strange was the fact that the amateur and professional players had to change in separate dressing rooms. The cricket pavilion – still there today – had two doors, one for the gentlemen and one for the players and we’d queue up outside and wait for them to appear to sign our autograph books. A sure way of finding out who was an amateur or a professional was by looking in the programme and counting the number of initials they had before their name. Thus we had H. Gimblett and H.F.T Buse ... No guesses who was the pro! The first recorded cricket match played at Clarence Park was on August 21, 1914 when Westonsuper-Mare played Glamorgan before that team was granted first class status. Several days later, Somerset played their first match on the ground when they entertained Yorkshire. The last county match to be played there was in August 1996 when Durham provided the opposition. The record attendance at Clarence Park was the six thousand spectators who attended Somerset’s game against Hampshire in 1947. Walking around Clarence Park today you can’t help thinking about those great days. The ghosts of all the famous players who played there still waft around, high in the tree tops, longing to tell their favourite stories to those who had the privilege of watching them play. Sadly there aren’t too many of us left and I suspect most of the people who visit the park today have no idea of the great performances that took place all those years ago. Forgotten heroes one and all: R.I.P. Arthur Wellard.