Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

Charles Williams at Norton Lodge. During the summer months, his visits to Oystermouth also allowed him to maintain contact with the Bancrofts, who no doubt further helped to hone his cricket technique with advice and encouragement about his batting and bowling. He also became involved with Swansea Cricket Club. At the time the focus of their activities in Swansea was at Bryn-y-Mor Field – a large meadow, encircled by trees, opposite the Uplands Hotel. The proximity of the hotel was convenient – not just as a watering hole where the cricketers could celebrate a victory, or drown their sorrows, but also as a changing room and a place to hold meetings. Swansea had first used Bryn-y-Mor Field in 1868 after reaching an agreement with its owner Robert Eaton. Prior to this, the town’s cricketers had led a peripatetic existence around the town using various fields, as well as wickets on Crumlin Burrows to the east of the town – an area which became home to a number of factory-run teams as the area became built up in the twentieth century – and also occasionally on a field at St. Helen’s near Gorse Lane, overlooking Swansea Bay. But the loss of these other locations in the mid-1860s posed major problems for the Swansea cricketers, so much so that they came close to disbanding because of the lack of a permanent home. Indeed, in August 1867, The Cambrian newspaper bemoaned that: the [Swansea] corporation – with such means at its disposal – does not make some provision for the healthful recreation of the inhabitants of the town. All available ground is being rapidly built upon. Why not therefore at once secure those (reclaimed) fields on the Mumbles road, by Gorse Lane, for a people’s park – a part of which might be reserved as a cricketing ground? Eaton’s offer was a godsend, but the Bryn-y-Mor Field suffered from poor drainage, and there were many occasions in the late spring and early summer when the outfield was in a damp state. Nevertheless, the young gentlemen of the Swansea area so enjoyed their camaraderie on the cricket field that in 1872 they formed a football team – in fact, many cricket clubs in Wales at that time branched out into winter sports, playing either football or rugby. On several occasions, Lewis joined with his friends from the Swansea Cricket Club in playing football on the cricket ground at Bryn-y-Mor. At first these games, which took place across both the Undergraduate Athlete and Rugby Player 33