Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

93 A Lancashire legend is laid to rest A mass of wreaths were piled high on the grass surrounding the grave with one of the most prominent from Lancashire consisting of red roses. Other floral tributes came from the MCC, Middlesex, Yorkshire and Surrey, from the Rugby Football Union and the Nantwich cricket and football clubs. In a moving moment, Hornby’s son Albert Henry plucked a red rose from the Lancashire wreath and threw it into the grave. In his final years Hornby was wracked by pain and he must have been terribly frustrated by both his inability to get around under his own steam and by the waning of his mental capabilities. Writer Neville Cardus had tried to interview Hornby a few years before his death and later wrote that ‘the old gentleman’ did not respond to his questions about past exploits and that he had been unable to unlock his memory. But Hornby was nothing if not a fighter and even in death he had the better of two of his most famous contemporaries, surviving both Barlow, who had died in Blackpool in 1919, and Grace, who passed away four years earlier. Three Lancashire captains: A.N.Hornby, Miles Kenyon, A.C.MacLaren.