Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

Gwydderug. It was the ‘pleasantest little town’ according to the Victorian gentleman author, George Borrow, writing in 1862. The Institute was opened in 1848, and there is evidence of early interest in cricket as its library was said to contain an 1830 book titled ‘ Handbook of Cricket ’. (This is more likely the 1838 Cricketer’s Hand Book ‘containing the origin of the game, remarks on recent alterations, directions for bowling, striking, and placing the players, and the laws as altered by the M.C.C.’, unless we have uncovered evidence for an earlier edition than previously recorded.) It was not until Lewis attended the school in the 1860s that its cricket developed into a substantial activity. By then the railway had arrived in the town, within three years bringing easier links to Cardiff, south-west England and the English midlands, though change appears to have been slow and there was little impact on the college and its scholars for many years. Cricket in School Days in Llandovery, Swansea and Gloucester 13 C.P’s county, Carmarthenshire, on an eighteenth-century map, showing many of the places figuring in his story, with variant spellings. In spite of several local government reorganisations, the county still has similar administrative boundaries.