HOME…AND AWAY –
Anniversary of First ‘Out Ground’ Championship game
The first home County Championship game to be played away from Trent Bridge was 125 years ago this week, on 12-14 August 1901 at the Welbeck Abbey Estate Ground.
Welbeck Abbey was the home of the Duke of Portland who in 1900, when President of the Club (a post he held five times) had expressed a wish that his ground should be used. Only two First-Class matches were played there – the second, also versus Derbyshire, in July 1904.
Given the ease with which Notts beat their local rivals in that first game – winning by an innings and 159 runs, despite losing all but two hours of the first day to rain and not starting the final day’s play until 3.00pm – it is perhaps surprising that only two games were played at Welbeck Abbey.
However, the Abbey Estate was not easily reached in 1901, which had an impact on the likely attendance. A reporter in the Nottingham Daily Express said: “…it has been a mistake to take the match to a venue so difficult to access. The nearest railway station, Cresswell, is over three miles away…”
The same commentator observed that spectators coming by bicycle or by cab (horse-drawn and open in 1901) would have been deterred by the weather as well.
In the match, Topsy Wass, who had rather lost form in the preceding weeks, was recalled and quite unexpectedly proved unplayable – 8-17 followed by 5-23. At that time, his first innings return was the best of his career; during the game he passed 50 wickets for the season (so his form cannot have been that bad) and took his 250th career wicket.
The other principal reason for the wide margin was the form of openers AO ‘Jonah’ Jones and Jimmy Iremonger. They put on 119 for the first wicket, the fourth successive innings in which they made a century stand together.
Jones eventually fell, caught off the bowling of Gilbert Curgenven, for 72 but Iremonger went on for his third consecutive ton, making 108 before being caught off Albert Lawton’s slow seamers.
Lawton took over wicket keeping duties and stumped George Anthony for a duck off the bowling of Bill Storer (3-109), the last wicket as Notts declared at 300-6.
Iremonger missed out on four centuries in a row, making only eight in the first innings against Middlesex in the next match, but rallied with 102 in the second innings.
He was one of four Notts batters to pass 1,000 runs for the season, making 1,108 at 42.61, with four centuries, all in that sequence around the game at Welbeck.
Wass, as mentioned above, ran through the Derbyshire first innings; he and Bert Hallam (2-24) bowled unchanged as the visitors collapsed to 44 all out; only opener Levi Wright, 23, made double figures.
Following-on they did a little better, reaching 97. Wass took five more wickets for a match return of 13-40!
John Gunn, 5-14 was the other Notts wicket taker.
Rain was again a factor in the 1904 match, wiping out the entire third day’s play, leaving the match as a draw.
In that game, Wass again tormented Derbyshire with 6-71 as they were bowled out for 127, conceding a 60 run first innings deficit.
Notts, though, were holding on at 74-7 when the rain intervened. Arnold Warren, who played one Test for England in 1905, took all seven for just 43 runs. His career-best figures of 8-69 had come in Notts first innings so he ended the game with 15-112, the eighth best figures against Notts in any First-Class game.
It is possible that this performance contributed to his selection for England the following season. He played his only Test against Australia at Headingley and was England’s most successful bowler, with 5-57 in Australia’s first innings – not sufficient, apparently, to earn him a second cap.
Despite the support of the Duke of Portland, those early games were not a financial success and First-Class cricket did not return to Welbeck until 2019, when, perversely, the weather again intervened.
Play was only possible on the first day when Notts made 162 all out and Hampshire were 93-2; the match was staged at the John Fretwell Centre, Nettleworth, the new home of Welbeck CC and the venue for a number of List-A games for Notts Outlaws.
County Cricket has been played at other Nottinghamshire ‘out grounds’ in the ensuing 125 years, including at Newark, Worksop and Cleethorpes, but in the current cricket schedule, most out ground games are List-A, white-ball fixtures.
August 2026