Lives in Cricket No 27 - CB Llewellyn

92 Chapter Seventeen Family Arrangements Llewellyn’s father, Thomas, had died aged 69 in Grey’s Hospital, Pietermaritzburg on 17 November 1914. By 1912 his business had expanded to occupy numbers 10 to 14 Printing Office Street, while he lived in his own bungalow at 5 Stranack Street. He left his business to the third of his five sons, Walter, but he balked at its small burden of debt and Anne Llewellyn, the widow, paid it off and took over the firm. Buck and his youngest brother were bequeathed small legacies, but the will did not refer to the two other sons. By January 1915, Buck was living at 218 Burnley Road, Accrington, but during the war his home was in Bradford. His mother died on 30 March 1920 in her seventy-sixth year, and with her evaporated the family memories going back to the 1870s. Buck’s own family was growing up. Madge was 19 and Olive was a year younger, (Dorothy Ivy) Agatha was 16, born on 6 May, 1904 and Ena (Bobbie) was born in October 1906. All the girls had nicknames: Holly, Dovey, Babs and Bobbie (not necessarily in that order). Bobbie was so named because Buck had wanted a son; Buck himself was called ‘Lew’ in the family. The use of pet names suggests that they were a close and affectionate group. Babs, who married Charles Anderton in 1934 became her father’s strongest supporter. It cannot be said that either Accrington or Buck quite repeated in the 1920s their triumphs of 1913 and 1914. With George Leach as their professional, the club had finished in third place in the League in 1919 and won the knock-out competition, then known as the Hacking Cup, but in 1920 they dropped down to thirteenth position, last place but one. They were in a state of flux, as Billy Ormerod retired and other players moved on, or simply lost efficiency; two younger players, one of them Johnny Pollard, left and turned professional. With the return of Buck in 1921, the club rose to the fourth place in the final table, winning ten and losing eight of their 26 matches; George Parker, with 513 runs at an average of 34.20 and Buck actually