Earliest Cricket
Cricket probably reached Wiltshire by the end of the 17th century. The earliest known reference to cricket in the county is dated 1769.
John Major points out that "cricket did not spread evenly across whole counties" but had a tendency towards "local adoption". He mentions a match at Stockton, Wiltshire in 1799 which was reported as "an event so novel in the county of Wiltshire". But cricket was being played by then at several other venues in the county: e.g., Calne, Devizes, Marlborough, Salisbury and Westbury.
Read more about this topic: Wiltshire County Cricket Club
Famous quotes containing the words earliest and/or cricket:
“I perceive that in these woods the earliest settlements are, for various reasons, clustering about the lakes, but partly, I think, for the sake of the neighborhood as the oldest clearings. They are forest schools already established,—great centres of light.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)