Chapter Six Canterbury Week Travelling by river and then by coach ‘with time for plenty of glasses of ale at every village we passed through’ seems an admirable way of going to a cricket match. Such was the journey made by the visiting cricketers, actors and their friends, who were due to entertain in the theatre at night in the first Canterbury Week of 1842. They came by river from London to Ramsgate and continued through Thanet to Canterbury. The famous festival was inaugurated by a group of amateur actors and the old Beverley Club. The first game, between Kent and All England, was played on Beverley’s ground on the Thanet road but the Week moved in 1847 when the St Lawrence ground was opened. Fuller Pilch was groundsman from 1847 to 1868. Lord Bessborough and his brother Sir Ponsonby Fane founded the Old Stagers to give theatrical performances in the evenings. In 1845, the Ponsonby brothers were among the founder members of I Zingari, the most famous of all the wandering clubs, which, with another notable amateur club, The Band of Brothers, has enjoyed a long association with the Week. The first Week opened on 1 August 1842 and after Sir John Lubbock’s initiative it coincided neatly with August Bank Holiday. By then it had been established for almost 30 years, with the cricket played amidst the most social and hospitable of settings. For a time the matches paired Kent against England in the first half and the Gentlemen of the MCC against the Gentlemen of Kent in the second. The fixtures became more varied and in the August Bank Holidays of the 1870s – the first part of the Week – North v South was featured. It was a happy juxtaposition but the Bank Holiday was subordinate to the whole of the Week. Thus the Thursday Ladies’ Day of 1871: “From noon to four pm visitors arrived in large numbers. Four-in-hands skilfully tooled, old fashioned family carriages whisked along in the old fashioned four-horse postillion form, new fashioned brakes and waggonettes, dashing dog carts, tandems, busses and other vehicles, all of them fully, most of them fairly, freighted, rattled up the incline of the fine old ground one after the other in such numbers that when the rush was over and all were settled in picturesque groups, when the little slope was covered by brightly toileted ladies, when the promenade was thronged by a gay company and when the ring around the ground was fully formed, it was universally acknowledged that the big gathering was the gayest, the most numerous and influential ever seen at a cricket match at St Lawrence,” said Wisden . Truly was this The Ladies’ Day, for of the 7,000 visitors present “the better half” were ladies, whose presence so very much enhanced the beauty of that charming, animated picture of English summer life.” The picture was completed by a fine, all-round performance from WG Grace who made 117 and had a match analysis of 12-144 in The Gentlemen of the MCC’s victory over Kent. Showery weather marred the 1872 Bank Holiday match in which James Lillywhite took all ten North wickets in their solitary innings but finished on the losing side. A year later Wisden enthused over the colours which graced the 24