White Conduit Club

The White Conduit Club (WCC), although short-lived, was one of the most significant clubs in cricket history for it bridged the gulf between the rural and rustic Hambledon era and the new, modern and metropolitan era of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and Lord's, the two entities that it spawned. It was named from White Conduit Fields which was an open area outside Islington, itself a rural community in the eighteenth century. White Conduit House, which was a popular meeting point for cricketers in the wider London area, was a tavern located in what is now Penton Street. A 1754 advertisement actually mentions that it had a cricket field; in addition to a fishpond and milk direct from the cow!

It is not entirely certain when the WCC was founded but, in Pelham Warner's book, Lord's 1787–1945, he cites an earlier work by A. D. Taylor (1903) and says it was formed in 1782 as an offshoot of a West End convivial club called the Je-ne-sais-quoi, some of whose members took to frequenting White Conduit House and playing their matches there in the adjoining fields. The Je-ne-sais-quoi may have been a precursor of, or at least affiliated to, the Star and Garter that had its meeting place on Pall Mall and drafted the earliest written Laws of the game in 1744 and again in 1774. WCC's most prominent members were the likes of the Earl of Winchilsea, Colonel Charles Lennox and Sir Peter Burrell. It was nominally an exclusive club that only "gentlemen" might play for, but the club did employ professionals and one of these was the bowler Thomas Lord.

The famous batsman Billy Beldham was hired while still a young professional by the WCC in 1785 and he told James Pycroft, author of The Cricket Field (1851) that his farming employer concluded a deal with Winchilsea to allow Beldham time off his agricultural duties to go to the "new cricket ground" at White Conduit Fields in Islington and play for Hampshire against England. The score of the match has evidently been lost because there is no trace of an England v Hampshire game at White Conduit Fields in or about 1785. Beldham's first match in Scores & Biographies was for England v WCC at Lord's (the old ground) in 1787; but he was previously recorded as playing for Berkshire against Essex in 1785 (see Waghorn's Dawn of Cricket). Although his match cannot be traced, it is interesting that Beldham described the ground at White Conduit Fields as "new" because it was not a new venue, although perhaps a new area of it had been designated for use by the WCC. There are records of matches on White Conduit Fields as far back as 1718.

White Conduit Club disappeared in the aftermath of MCC's founding and White Conduit Fields also disappeared under increasing urbanisation as London grew and swallowed Islington whole. For the record, White Conduit Club is known to have played at least eleven top-class matches (probably thirteen) between 1784 and 1788. The last, ironically, was on 27 June 1788 against MCC at Lord's Old Ground. It is recorded in Scores & Biographies on page 83 and the WCC team contained ten unknown players. MCC won by 83 runs and WCC played no more.

The following made the most appearances for WCC in its seven matches from which the scorecards have survived:

7 – George Finch, 9th Earl of Winchilsea (MCC)
6 – Sir Peter Burrell (Kent) and John Dampier (WCC)
5 – Gilbert East (Berkshire)
4 – G. Drummond (Surrey), Richard Newman (MCC, Essex and Kent), George Talbot (MCC) and J. Wyatt (Essex)
3 – Colonel Charles Lennox (MCC), John Peachey (WCC), Lumpy Stevens (Chertsey and Surrey), Tom Taylor (Hampshire) and Tom Walker (Hampshire and Surrey).