Dorset Square – the first Lord’s
The Dorset Square ground assumed great significance from the day it was opened. It was commissioned by the gentlemen of the Star and Garter, soon to form the Marylebone Cricket Club, MCC, and was immediately put to use on staging high-stake matches. It soon became the centre of the revitalised London cricket scene. Along with the Artillery Ground and Broadhalfpenny Down, it is one of the three Great Grounds of the Early Cricket era. Its successor as the home of the MCC was to be in St John’s Wood, and it is referred to as the Home of Cricket to this very day. The Dorset Square Ground was a link between Early Cricket and the modern game.
Early history
As cricket regained popularity in London after the Seven Years War receded into memory around 1780, the Star and Garter Club again became the centre for young aristocrats looking for sport and gambling. The Artillery Ground was no longer available for cricket, so they went back to the old favourite, The White Conduit Fields Ground, putting teams out for a while as The White Conduit Club.
The White Conduit Club had their own rules specifying that members must be gentlemen, essentially meaning they must be connected to the aristocracy. Ironically, the key to their future lay beyond this elite group. Thomas Lord (pictured) was a skilled bowler (one report says fast, another slow) and was paid at the White Conduit Club to provide practice and act as a general attendant as well. He also had business ambitions. Essentially, he was a young man on his way.
Meanwhile, the players were not happy with the White Conduit Fields arrangements. They were open to the public, and the ground itself had a footpath transversing it.
Members had noticed Lord’s entrepreneurial spirit, and two of them, the Earl of Winchilsea and the Duke of Richmond, guaranteed him against all losses if he would go out and find a new ground for them. Lord found the land he wanted at Dorset Fields, laid out a wicket, put up a fence and charged sixpence admission. He also took out a lease on the Allsop Public House on the corner of Upper Gloucester Place and opened a wine and spirit shop through which spectators had to go (and pay) to enter the ground.
On 31 May 1787, the first match took place at Lord’s new ground with Middlesex beating Essex by 93 runs – a match played for 200 guineas. Lord himself opened the innings for Middlesex, scoring one and 36. For Thomas Lord, fortune and immortality beckoned. And so, according to the MCC itself, the club was born.
Use as a ground
1793 – Cricket Match At Lord’s Ground In Dorset Square
A 1,000 guinea contest at the Dorset Square Lord’s Ground between the Earl of Danley’s team (Kent) and the Earl of Winchilsea’s (MCC) on 20-21 June 1791.
Thomas Lord’s ground was soon established as the premier cricket venue in London. MCC played their first fixture there on 30 July 1787, interesting against the White Conduit Club. This fixture shows that there was no simple transition between one club and the other; rather, both contrived to run in parallel for a while. No doubt some members of the White Conduit Club chose to hedge their bets and see how the new venture would work out. Soon, though, it became apparent that the future lay in Marylebone, not Islington, and the White Conduit Fields Ground was soon abandoned by the Upper Echelons. A different club, however, was to continue playing there until 1834.
The location proved popular with players and with spectators. Several thousand would gather there for the big fixtures. There were refreshment huts on the ground, although many preferred the Yorkshire Stingo pub nearby (pictured c1770), which was demolished only as recently as 1960.
Around ten Important Matches were played per annum on this ground, under the control of and for the benefit of Lord, not the MCC, whose hiring of the ground was on a match-by-match basis.
A particularly significant day at Lords was 2 June 1791 when the eighteen-year-old, Lord Fredrick Beauclerk made his first appearance for MCC. He was to become one of the greatest players of the early Nineteenth Century. The first century at Lords was scored by Tom Walker on 7 May 1792, with Silver Billy Beldham scoring another century later in the same match. Both these players had played much for Hambledon and are still associated, spoken of as heroes of that club. That they should have become MCC players shows how Hambledon’s place in the cricket world had been supplanted by the MCC.
The ground was hired out for purposes other than cricket. A couple of glimpses of the ground in different contexts:
A military parade – the Presentation of the Colours to the Second Regiment, Royal East India Volunteers by Landy Dundas, 1797. Henry Mathews (artist).
Parades such as this became a feature of life as the country prepared for the Napoleonic Wars.
A balloon ascent, 1802. Note the covered grandstand, this looks like a permanent feature, not something I have seen referred to elsewhere.
Subsequent history
By the early Nineteenth Century, some of the great players Lord had relied on to attract crowds had reached the end of their careers. In addition, the area was becoming increasingly run down, and Lord decided the time was coming to move on. The final fixture was on August 17, 1810. In 1809, the land was sold for development. Dorset Square is the central feature of the layout as planned by the Portman Estate. The layout of the development is still intact, so the borders of the ground can be discerned.
Lord, whose Dorset Square lease had expired, took the turfs to a new site off Lisson Grove and near Regent’s Park. This ground was not well-liked by MCC members and was never accepted as the home of the club – as far as we know, they only ever played three games there (all in 1813), the club effectively becoming semi-dormant as a cricket-playing entity. In 1814, this ground was sold for development as part of the Regent’s Canal project, and Lord moved his turf again, this time to the present ground at St John’s Wood, which opened the same year, and the club was effectively reborn.
In 1825, the future of the St John’s Wood ground was itself placed in jeopardy when Lord proposed a housing development. This was prevented by William Ward (a financier and noted cricketer with a top score of 278), who purchased the lease of the ground from Lord for £5,000, and Lord ceased to have any involvement with MCC. Ward sold the leasehold to James Dark in 1835 for an upfront payment of £2,000 and an annuity of £435 to the Ward family. In 1864, Dark, who was seriously ill, sold his interests to MCC for £11,000. Finally, in 1865, the landlord of the ground, Isaac Moses, sold the freehold to MCC for £18,150; the payments to the Ward family must have continued until the end of the lease in 1893. William Nicholson, who was a member of the MCC committee at the time, loaned the money for the purchase. Nicholson was a gin distiller whose corporate colours were yellow and orange, and it is often suggested that MCC adopted these colours as a mark of gratitude for Nicholson’s financial support.
The site of the first Lord’s ground today, Dorset Square garden, not far from the Baker Street tube station. If you want to indulge in a little cricket atmosphere, the Potting Shed restaurant and bar, on the corner of the square, has some memorabilia.
Important Matches
| 1 | 31 May 1787 | Middlesex | Essex |
| 2 | 14 Jun 1787 | White Conduit Club | Middlesex |
| 3 | 20 Jun 1787 | White Conduit Club | England |
| 4 | 10 Sep 1787 | A to M | N to Z |
| 5 | 21 May 1787 | White Conduit Club | Middlesex |
| 6 | 05 Jun 1787 | White Conduit Club | Middlesex |
| 7 | 30 Jul 1787 | Marylebone Cricket Club | White Conduit Club |
| 8 | 26 May 1788 | A to M | N to Z |
| 9 | 05 Jun 1788 | England | Hampshire and Kent |
| 10 | 27 Jun 1788 | Marylebone Cricket Club | White Conduit Club |
| 11 | 18 May 1789 | Middlesex | Gentlemen of England |
| 12 | 03 Jun 1789 | A to M | N to Z |
| 13 | 25 Jun 1789 | England | Hampshire |
| 14 | 08 Jul 1789 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Essex |
| 15 | 07 Sep 1789 | Middlesex | London |
| 16 | 10 May 1790 | Left-Handed | Right-Handed |
| 17 | 20 May 1790 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Hornchurch |
| 18 | 03 Jun 1790 | Marylebone Cricket Club | West Sussex |
| 19 | 10 Jun 1790 | Hampshire | Kent |
| 20 | 16 Aug 1790 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 21 | 30 Aug 1790 | England | Hampshire and Marylebone Cricket Club |
| 22 | 16 May 1791 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 23 | 23 May 1791 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 24 | 30 May 1791 | Gentlemen of England | Old Etonians |
| 25 | 02 Jun 1791 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Gentlemen of Kent |
| 26 | 06 Jun 1791 | Middlesex | Hampshire |
| 27 | 13 Jun 1791 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Hornchurch |
| 28 | 15 Aug 1791 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Kent |
| 29 | 19 Aug 1791 | Hertfordshire and Marylebone Cricket Club | Hornchurch |
| 30 | 26 Sep 1791 | Hertfordshire, Essex and Middlesex | Kent |
| 31 | 07 May 1792 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 32 | 15 May 1792 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 33 | 21 May 1792 | E Bligh’s XI | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI |
| 34 | 28 May 1792 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Brighton |
| 35 | 31 May 1792 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Berkshire |
| 36 | 06 Jun 1792 | Marylebone Cricket Club | England |
| 37 | 21 Jun 1792 | England | Kent |
| 38 | 30 Apr 1792 | Old Etonians | Old Westminsters |
| 39 | 20 Sep 1792 | Middlesex | Brighton |
| 40 | 13 May 1793 | Old Etonians | Old Westminsters |
| 41 | 22 May 1793 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 42 | 06 Jun 1793 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Hornchurch |
| 42 | 12 Jun 1793 | England | Surrey and Sussex |
| 43 | 17 Jun 1793 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Essex |
| 44 | 20 Jun 1793 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Kent |
| 45 | 24 Jun 1793 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Berkshire |
| 46 | 01 Jul 1793 | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI | G Louch’s XI |
| 47 | 17 Jul 1793 | England | Essex and Hertfordshire |
| 48 | 26 Aug 1793 | Middlesex | England |
| 49 | 09 Sep 1793 | Middlesex | England |
| 50 | 13 May 1794 | Marylebone Cricket Club | London |
| 51 | 21 May 1794 | Marylebone Cricket Club | London |
| 52 | 26 May 1794 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 53 | 09 Jun 1794 | England | Surrey |
| 54 | 30 Jun 1794 | R Leigh’s XI | G Louch’s XI |
| 55 | 14 Jul 1794 | Middlesex | England |
| 56 | 29 Jul 1794 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Oldfield |
| 57 | 01 Aug 1794 | Thursday Club | Kennington Wednesday Club |
| 58 | 05 Aug 1794 | Charterhouse School | Westminster School |
| 59 | 07 Aug 1794 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Hampshire and Kent |
| 60 | 12 Aug 1794 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Oldfield |
| 61 | 13 Aug 1794 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Oldfield |
| 62 | 27 Aug 1794 | Oldfield | Kent |
| 63 | 10 Sep 1794 | England | Surrey |
| 64 | 04 May 1795 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 65 | 11 May 1795 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 66 | 12 May 1795 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 67 | 25 May 1795 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 68 | 01 Jun 1795 | C Lennox’s XI | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI |
| 69 | 09 Jun 1795 | C Lennox’s XI | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI |
| 70 | 22 Jun 1795 | Surrey and Marylebone Cricket Club | England |
| 71 | 26 Jun 1795 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 72 | 02 Jul 1795 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Bullingdon |
| 73 | 16 Jul 1795 | Middlesex | Oldfield |
| 74 | 06 Aug 1795 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Oldfield |
| 75 | 09 May 1796 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 76 | 16 May 1796 | Middlesex | Kent |
| 77 | 27 May 1796 | E Bligh’s XI | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI |
| 78 | 30 May 1796 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 79 | 06 Jun 1796 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 80 | 13 Jun 1796 | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI | Earl of Darnley’s XI |
| 81 | 20 Jun 1796 | Middlesex | Kent |
| 82 | 11 Jul 1796 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Bullingdon |
| 83 | 13 Jul 1796 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Montpelier and Thursday Clubs |
| 84 | 12 Aug 1796 | Thursday Club | Montpelier and Kennington Clubs |
| 85 | 15 Aug 1796 | Middlesex | Surrey |
| 86 | 29 Aug 1796 | Thursday Club | Highgate and Hampstead |
| 87 | 11 May 1797 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 88 | 15 May 1797 | C Lennox’s XI | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI |
| 89 | 19 May 1797 | C Lennox’s XI | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI |
| 90 | 24 May 1797 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 91 | 06 Jun 1797 | England | Surrey |
| 92 | 19 Jun 1797 | England | Surrey |
| 93 | 26 Jun 1797 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Montpelier |
| 94 | 04 Jul 1797 | C Lennox’s XI | Earl of Winchilsea’s XI |
| 95 | 10 Jul 1797 | Marylebone Cricket Club | London |
| 96 | 14 Aug 1797 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Hampshire |
| 97 | 28 Aug 1797 | Marylebone Cricket Club | England |
| 98 | 21 Sep 1797 | Marylebone Cricket Club | England |
| 99 | 02 May 1798 | Lord F Beauclerk’s XI | J Tufton’s XI |
| 100 | 09 May 1798 | Marylebone Cricket Club | London |
| 101 | 28 May 1798 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Montpelier |
| 102 | 06 Jun 1798 | England | Surrey |
| 103 | 20 Jun 1798 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Middlesex |
| 104 | 26 Jun 1798 | Marylebone Cricket Club | England |
| 105 | 02 Jul 1798 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Highgate and Hampstead |
| 106 | 11 Jul 1798 | Marylebone Cricket Club | England |
| 107 | 13 Jul 1798 | Lord F Beauclerk’s XI | R Whitehead’s XI |
| 108 | 02 Aug 1798 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Hampshire |
| 109 | 13 Aug 1798 | England | Surrey |
| 110 | 16 Aug 1798 | England | Surrey |
| 111 | 24 Aug 1798 | Lord F Beauclerk’s XI | J Tufton’s XI |
| 112 | 05 Sep 1798 | Middlesex | Hertfordshire |
| 113 | 10 Jun 1799 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 114 | 24 Jun 1799 | Marylebone Cricket Club | Thursday Club |
| 115 | 30 Jul 1799 | Surrey and Marylebone Cricket Club | England |
| 116 | 01 Aug 1799 | R Whitehead’s XI | Lord Yarmouth’s XI |
| 117 | 08 Aug 1799 | Eton College | Westminster School |
| 118 | 13 Aug 1799 | England | Surrey |
| 119 | 15 Aug 1799 | England | Surrey |
Further reading
Double Century : The Story of MCC and Cricket – Tony Lewis (1987)