Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

41 are Dick Barlow and Lancashire’s splendid wicket-keeper, Richard Pilling. The window was the brainchild of Barlow, who decided to spend some of the proceeds of his benefit match in 1886 by commissioning the window, which he designed himself – he was later to design his own gravestone, which bears the inscription ‘Bowled at Last’. The window was completed a year after Barlow’s benefit. Pictured behind the three players is the original Old Trafford pavilion and Ladies’ pavilion. For many years the window’s whereabouts were unknown until in the 1960s Lancashire historian, museum curator and committee member Keith Hayhurst, a former schoolmaster, decided to track it down. Enlisting the help of Manchester Evening News cricket writer and author Brian Bearshaw, the window was eventually traced. One day, Hayhurst was making inquiries about the window in Blackpool when he spotted a bowls player with a bag bearing the initials LBW. It was none other than Leslie Barlow Wilson, who was Dick Barlow’s grandson. Yet neither he nor his family seemed keen to discuss the window. Barlow, it transpired had fathered an illegitimate son, who had bought the window from Barlow’s daughter. It wasn’t until seven years later after knocking on scores of doors that Hayhurst finally found the owner – and the window – in a house in Southport. It was taken to Old Trafford and, for some time, languished in a store room at the ground before eventually being restored to its rightful place as the centrepiece of the Long Room in the pavilion. In addition to Francis Thompson’s At Lord’s , Hornby was celebrated in song by Dick Barlow. The first line ‘Captain Hornby is the finest man for many miles around’ gives some idea of the esteem in which he was held by Barlow. The latter continued his near hero-worship of Hornby by dedicating his 1908 book, Forty Seasons of First-Class Cricket to his former opening partner, writing: ‘This book is respectfully dedicated to my old and highly- esteemed friend and colleague, A.N.Hornby, Esq, for many years Captain and President of the Lancashire County C.C.’ There was also a dance by the British light music composer A.N.Norman, which celebrated the deeds of the Lancashire captain, entitled Hornby Schottische. Hornby and Barlow were almost inseparable as opening partners for Lancashire – and they are still together quite close to Old Trafford in the form of Hornby Road and Barlow Road, about a three-minute walk from the ground. The two suburban roads are not quite 22 yards apart but they are no more than 100 yards The Hornby-Barlow partnership begins