Hadlow Cricket Club - The Historical Club

The Historical Club

In the 1747 English cricket season, the Hadlow cricket club was stated in contemporary sources, later published by F S Ashley-Cooper, to be a famous parish for cricket.

The Penny London Post of 1 July that year announced a match to be played on Dartford Breach (sic) for two guineas a man by Hadlow against the famous Dartford Cricket Club as "the deciding match". Unfortunately, there was no report of the outcome (perhaps it was rained off) and no reports have been found of the previous fixtures either.

But the importance of the Hadlow team was confirmed when a major match at the Artillery Ground on 9 July 1747 between teams led by the star players Robert Colchin and William Hodsoll included on Hodsoll's side: John Larkin and others from the parish of Hadlow in Kent.

Later in the month, "Five of Hadlow" twice opposed "Five of Slindon", the legendary Sussex club that was famous for Richard Newland and its challenges to the rest of England.

In August 1747, when Kent played against All-England at the Artillery Ground, its team included Larkin and a player called Jones, also of Hadlow. Larkin was certainly an outstanding player of the time.

The last mention of the Hadlow team in major cricket is a match against Addington Cricket Club, another of the "great little clubs" of the pre-MCC era, in 1751. Cricket went into decline in the 1750s, largely because of the Seven Years War and Hadlow was missing from the sources when the war ended in 1763 and the "Hambledon Era" began.