It’s not over for Zingari!
QUESTION In his biography, Ian Botham mentions a cricket team called I Zingari. How did this team get its name? Are they still playing?
On July 4, 1845, barrister William Boland took a team of friends to play a cricket match at Harrow. They beat the school with ease and on their return to london, sports enthusiast John loraine Baldwin invited three of the cricketers, Frederick and Spencer Ponsonby and R. P. long, to dine at the Blenheim Hotel in Bond Street.
After supper, talk began of forming a team solely of amateur players with no ground of its own but members who would seek to promote cricket far and wide.
It’s said that long was fond of his claret and port, and spent the latter part of the night in a comatose state, waking only briefly to mutter ‘The Zingari, of course,’ when the question of a name for the new club was raised. His colleagues immediately accepted this Italian title of ‘the gypsies’ or ‘the wanderers’.
Rules were formed, half-serious and halfcomic, and Boland became perpetual president with Baldwin annual vicepresident in perpetuity.
As Bolland became perpetual president in 1845, the club’s senior living officer is called not president but governor.
Today, there are 250 full-play members, 200 half- play members and 800 nonplaying. Membership is by invitation only and includes the Duke of Edinburgh.
The club colours are black, red and gold, symbolising the motto ‘out of darkness, through fire, into light’.
Baldwin lived to see the club complete its first 50 years before his death in 1896, coincidentally the same year as the founding of my club, Hull Zingari Cricket Club, which held its inaugural meeting at the Imperial Hotel in Hull on October 7.
The meeting decided not to approach the I Zingari Club to seek permission to use the name, considering that dropping the ‘I’ was sufficient. Hull Zingari Cricket Club is the oldest in the city of Kingston upon Hull and we have played on the same ground since 1910, currently as a tenant of Hull and East Riding Sports Club.
For more information, read The History Of I Zingari by R. l. Arrowsmith and B. J. W. Hill (Stanley Paul) and The Pen Pushers Of High Street — A Centenary History Of The Hull Zingari Cricket Club by David Fairbank and myself. Mike Ulyatt, honorary life member,
Hull Zingari Cricket Club, hullzingari.play-cricket.com
QUESTION Does anyone remember a poem that begins ‘Northumberland stands at the top of the tree and Cumberland next with its hills you will see’?
Bangor cathedral dean and pioneer educationalist James Henry Cotton (17801862) was born in nantwich on February 10, 1780, and educated at Rugby School and Trinity College, Cambridge, before being ordained in 1803.
In 1810, he opened a Sunday school in the cathedral, and national schools at Pentir and Vaynol, and later also in the town of Bangor and the parishes of llanllechyd and gaerwen.
This poem/song was called The Tour Of England, intended as a memory aid for the children of infant schools. It’s collected in The life And Speeches Of The Very Rev J.H. Cotton, BCl, Dean Of Bangor And Rector Of llanllechyd, Bangor, 1874. Little England has forty counties in all, Some great and some middling, and one very small; Six Northern, four Western, eight Eastern; and mind, three South-East, 12 Midland, seven Southern you’ll find. Chorus: If you’ll hear all my song, and it shall not be long, We’ll visit them all in their turn. Northumberland stands at the top of the tree, and Cumberland next with his hills you will see; then Westmorland for its lakes and slates so fam’d, and Durham oft times with its Bishoprick nam’d. then York with its Ridings the next on the roll, and Lancashire, known for its weavers, and coal; then Lincoln, so rich in its coast and its soil, and Nottingham, where they spin all the while. In Derbyshire the Peak we’ll see if you please; In Cheshire we’ll eat a good slice of their cheese; In Shropshire, of ale, we will take a small sup; In Stafford, the pott’ries shall find us a cup, By the Leicestershire spires, so taper and tall, thro’ Rutland of counties the smallest of all, We’ll pass to Northampton, nor stay to alight, Since we purpose to sleep at Bedford that night. and now, my good children, where next shall we rest; We’ll travel thro’ Bucks, and so on to the West; We’ll see Warwick Castle tho’ out of our way: at Worcester the china we’ll see the next day. For Hereford and Ross we’ll set out the next morn, and see Monmouth, where Henry V was born; the orchards of Gloucester we’ll pass on our way, and tarry at Oxford the whole of the day. But stop, let us see, as we are going all round, We must here turn about, and double our ground; and to Huntingdon go, and take a full view Of Cambridge’s fam’d University, too. the turkeys in Norfolk are famous we know, We will have a slice ere to Suffolk we go; Next over the Fens of Essex we’ll travel, then roll away o’er the Hertfordshire gravel, We’re now got to London, so great in renown, Of England itself, the great capital town; In Middlesex standing with Westminster, too, Embracing each other as children should do. thro’ the county of Surrey we’ll now take our ride, thro’ Kent down to Dover, and there we’ll abide; tho’ out of our country we may not advance, We will have a peep at the country of France. to the shores of Sussex we next will repair, the Forests of Hants, and Berks’ pastures so fair; the broad downs of Wiltshire we’ll gallop along, Nor Stonehenge, nor Sarum omit in our song. In Dorset and Somerset we’ll tarry awhile, their beautiful coasts all the time will beguile; and Devonshire, too, so mild and so bold, So fam’d for its valleys and worthies of old. to conclude, and to make an end of the land, We’ll make at the Land’s End of Cornwall a stand; and since that in every place you have been, You’ll remember, I hope, the things you have seen.
Corrine Beith, Newborough, anglesey.