THE ‘FIRST’ FIRST ELEVEN –
Nottingham’s Cricketing Pioneers
Eleven cricketers from Nottingham (and county) travelled to Sheffield for the match in July 1826 that we now celebrate – 200 years on – as the first First-Class game played by a Nottingham team.
Not that those players would have known that they were in a First-Class fixture…there was no such category back in the Regency days.
Even when cricket authorities introduced the idea of First-Class, in 1895, they did not award status retrospectively. It was not until the Association of Cricket Statistician (ACS) reviewed past matches that this game at the Darnall New Ground found its place in Nottinghamshire cricket history.
Who were those eleven pioneers?
Joseph Dennis, the captain and wicket-keeper, was, at 47, the senior player. He took part in seven First-Class matches for Nottingham, mostly against Sheffield Cricket Club.
At that time he was landlord of the Eclipse Inn, Chapel Bar and was clearly a man of some wealth – in 1815, he stood to lose £120 on bets he laid during one particular Nottingham game; fortunately, the match was won.
Dennis had played for Nottingham since 1800 but announced his retirement in 1828, due to failing eyesight. His fans begged him to appear in 1829, which he did in two final matches.
On 16 November 1831, Dennis suffered a stroke while in the Bell Inn, Nottingham, and was carried by its landlord, William Clarke – later to take over the Trent Bridge Inn and establish the ground we know today – back to the Eclipse, where he died shortly afterwards, only a month after the death of his wife. Writing in 1853, J F Sutton notes, "Dennis’s memory still lives in the memory of thousands".
A year after the 1826 match, Joseph Dennis was back at the Darnall ground as umpire in a match between Sussex and an England XI. This was the first of three matches played in 1827 as experimental contests between underarm and round-armed bowling. By 1835, powerless to prevent the use of roundarm, MCC finally amended the Laws of Cricket to make it legal.
Thomas Barker, born in Carlton on 15 November 1798, was a talented all-rounder.
His bowling - he bowled both round-arm and under-arm - was extremely fast. ‘So violent was it, that he sometimes ran up to the crease and propelled his instrument of attack as though his head would follow the ball’ commented Denison.
Thomas Barker has more than one ‘first’ to his credit and is assured of his place in the history of Trent Bridge and of Nottinghamshire Cricket.
He made his Nottingham debut in 1821 versus Leicester and opened both batting and bowling for the Nottingham team of 1826.
In 1834, Barker was the first Nottingham professional to appear in the Players v Gentlemen match series.
He was in the first opening partnership – and took the first ball – in Notts’s first inter-county matches against Sussex in 1835. With Redgate, he also formed the first opening bowling partnership for the County eleven.
He was therefore, the first person to appear on a First-Class scorecard for both Nottinghamshire and its predecessor, now usually referred to as the ‘Nottingham Old Club’.
A whimsical piece in Wisden Cricket Monthly suggested that Barker had run out the non-striker as the latter was backing up, not once or twice but five times.
That is true – Thomas Barker was ‘Mankading’ more than a century before the Indian bowler heaped disapproval on his own head by running out Bill Brown of Australia in the second test of the 1947/48 series in Australia.
Barker’s last match for Notts was in 1845, but in 1843 he fell out of a cab crossing London and the injuries received virtually ended his career.
Barker played in 72 First-Class games, making 1,269 runs at 10.57; his best innings was his only half-century, 58 v Kent. His First-Class wicket tally was 211 at an average of 19.18; on four occasions he took ten wickets in a match and had 15 five-wicket hauls. He also took 34 catches, to underline his all-round credentials.
Thomas Barker died in Nottingham on 2 March 1877. His daughter, Mary Ann, married John Henry Daft, elder brother of Nottinghamshire legend Richard Daft.
George Jarvis was a lacemaker by trade who died in Nottingham a few weeks short of his 80th birthday on 27 March 1880. He played one or two games alongside his brother Charles and was probably the first Nottinghamshire batsman to have a reputation beyond his own county.
Born in Radford on 24 June 1800, he was in the 1820s undoubtedly the best batter with the Nottingham Old Club, principally noted for his “off-hitting at which he excelled”; he also bowled fast under-arm and generally fielded mid-off.
George Jarvis played in the first-ever North v South match in 1836, making 11 and 7no as the North won by 6 wickets. In the same season he made the first of his five appearances in the Players v Gentlemen fixture at Lord’s.
He played 37 First-Class games, including one against England for the unlikely sounding combined Yorkshire- Nottinghamshire-Leicester XI. Thirteen of those games were for Nottingham and just six for Nottinghamshire – Jarvis is so early in the history pf the county side that he played only match at Trent Bridge, his last recorded game which was v Kent in August 1841.
For Nottinghamshire he scored 119 runs at 9.91 with a top score of 24; in all First-Class cricket he totalled 814 runs at 12.71 with two half-centuries; he also took nine First-Class wickets.
When interviewed in 1873 he was described as still of a sportive disposition and put out a challenge of £200 to play anyone in England at single-wicket whose age matched his – he was 72 at the time!
Most of his life he was a lacemaker, but as a youth he had been a gardener and in 1873 he had returned to gardening. He died in March 1880.
Charles Jarvis was the elder of the two Jarvis brothers that played for Nottingham before the foundation of the county side. Born on 11 November 1792, he played in just one First-Class game (indeed, for five of the 1826 eleven that game was both their first and last First-Class fixture). Charles made 3 and 13; George did rather better, scoring 20 and 14 and taking one wicket.
Charles also played for the XXII of Nottingham v England in 1818, making 13 in his only innings, and for the Nottingham Old Club v Leicester in 1821, scoring 1 and 0 in another heavy innings defeat.
William Clarke, the Father of Trent Bridge, effectively took control of Nottingham cricket in 1831 and made his pub, the Bell Inn in the Market Square, cricket’s Nottingham headquarters. His move to the Trent Bridge Inn, then little more than a ramshackle cottage, enabled him to turn the adjacent meadow into Nottingham’s first pay-to-enter cricket ground.
However he miscalculated the reaction of his fellow townsfolk who failed to appreciate the idea of paying to watch cricket, since they had hitherto viewed matches free of charge on The Forest.
So Clarke abandoned this loss-making venture and went to London where he signed up the best England cricketers of the time and created his privately-run All England Eleven.
For six years he had a monopoly, but then several of his star players became disillusioned by Clarke’s meanness and dictatorial ways. They broke away, setting up a rival team called United All England.
Public demand was such that both teams still had more than enough fixtures. Clarke, still playing cricket for All England, took a wicket with the last ball he bowled in June 1856, aged 57. He died a few weeks later.
George Smith of Cropwell Bishop, born on 19 November 1785, was a lime-burner by trade and a regular player for his home village.
He appeared for the Nottingham Old Club in 12 matches between 1817 and 1827, three of those now deemed to be First-Class, and was a steady and safe batsman.
His obituary in the Nottingham Review, he died on 3 April 1838, noted ‘In him the poor have lost a friend and his death will be deplored by a large circle of friends and acquaintances', and mentioned that he had 'shone particularly in the great match of 1817'. This game, his first significant match, was between XI of England and XXII of Nottingham in which Smith scored 29 - the best of that match and his highest in an important fixture.
In the dozen matches for Nottingham he made 217 runs at 10.85 and took seven catches; he is not recorded as bowling for the Old Club. His last appearance was in 1827 v Sheffield on the Forest.
Richard Warsop was the last of four brothers to play for the old Nottingham side at the end of the 18th Century.
A good all-round cricketer, his first recorded match was for Nottingham v Melton Mowbray in September 1783. Warsop is recorded in a total of 18 games, scoring 132 runs, with a top total of 29, made against Sheffield in November 1800 (the season ended much later in that era). In those 18 matches, Richard Warsop took 27 wickets.
In 1803, he and his brother Thomas appeared in a combined Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire side v Hampshire; two other brothers, William and Samuel, also played for the club, although complete records are not documented.
John Kettleband, born in Radford on 22 July 1801, first appears in local cricket records playing for the Pelican Club in 1821. No other local club records could be found but Kettleband played a dozen games for the Nottingham Old Club, the first of which was away v Bury in September 1825.
His highest recorded score was 39 versus Sheffield in 1831 and the last of his matches for the Old Club was also against Sheffield a year later. In his 12 games, he made 229 runs at 10.90 and took one catch; he is not credited with any wickets.
His death is given as 3 April 1834 but very few details of this cricketer are available.
Charles Goodall, a lace manufacturer, played his one First-Class game for the County in 1826 aged 43, though he appears in records for the Old Club as far back as 1813, playing apparently against Leicester at Loughborough in November – a very late, and potentially chilly, time to be on the cricket field. The 1826 match appears to be his last major game.
Goodall was born on 26 October 1782 in Nottingham, so he was already 31 when he played in that 1813 game; he appeared for the Old Club irregularly until 1827 and his record in important matches is seven games, 68 runs at 6.80 and a top score of 23, though we cannot say against which side.
He died in Nottingham on 18 December 1868. His obituary in the Nottingham Journal said he was "the last survivor of that era of cricket" and that "the old gentleman was always to be seen at Trent Bridge at county matches...his reminiscences and talk about ancient times were ever truly interesting".
Peter Bramley, another cricketing publican, kept the Old Spot in Daybrook (now The Cooper's Brook) which in that era had a cricket ground attached.
Bramley was a regular member of the Nottingham Club until 1826; his best score was 21 v Holt at Holt in 1821; in important Nottingham matches he scored 118 runs at 9.08 and took 17 catches.
He seems to have had a mixed reputation – in the Nottingham Book of Scores he is "...of joyous face and mirthful eccentricities" but elsewhere Bramley was considered a ‘blackleg and a man without any conscience’ due to his gambling (he was a rare hand at cards, as well as a noted runner and fives player). After he died, however, it was discovered he was quietly quite generous and not as black as he had been painted.
Richard Daft told one anecdote about Bramley that he was given a hat by the famed Regency sportsman Squire Osbaldeston in recognition of a fine catch to dismiss the Squire. Some time later, Bramley and some friends were poaching and when challenged by a gamekeeper, he showed the hat, with the name George Osbaldeston and was promptly allowed to carry on ‘blazing away’ (as Daft put it)!
A good batter and fielder in the covers, he played from 1813 to 1826 and died on 5 November 1838 aged 53, at Graziers Halfway House, between Newark and Lincoln.
George Thorpe was born in Nottingham in or around 1781 and made his debut for the Nottingham Old Club in 1815 v XV of Barrow. His principal role appears to have been that of long-stop, a vital fielding position in the days of fast underarm bowling and wicketkeepers without gloves or pads, as his batting record, even allowing for the generally low scoring in the 1820s, was modest – 17 innings with one 'not out' and an average of under six.
‘Honest’ George Thorpe kept the Eagle Tavern in Garners Hill, Nottingham and was landlord of the Golden Fleece, Fisher Gate, when he died on 11 May 1847.
In one obituary, he was remembered as ‘a firm friend of religious and civil liberty…[and] the author of the popular song Rancliffe O’. (Which does not seem to have survived the years).
Twelfth Man?
Emmanuel Vincent, wicketkeeper for the combined Sheffield-Leicester team, was a scissorsmith by trade who played for Nottingham as well.
He played for Sheffield from 1822 and in 1828 was allowed to represent Nottingham, playing seven First-Class games for the Club until 1832. He then returned to Sheffield; his final game for his native town was in 1846.
Emmanuel Vincent was born on 2 October 1798 in Sheffield and died there on 7 July 1860.
He played 20 First-Class matches, making 372 runs at 10.94 and a top score of 42, for Nottingham against his home club, Sheffield.
He is credited with being an 'occasional' wicket keeper, though sufficiently often for him to claim 17 catches and 15 stumpings. Vincent also represented England (once) the North (three times) Yorkshire and Sheffield.
The 1826 match, against a combined Sheffield-Leicester XI, took place before photography – indeed, an exposure taken by Frenchman Joseph Niepce in 1826 of his Le Gras estate at Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France, is now regarded as the world’s first photograph – so that the only image we have of the Nottingham First First-Class Eleven is a sketch of William Clarke (see above) which does at least gives us some idea of what the Regency cricketer looked like.
July 2026
Scorecard of that historic first First-Class game can be seen here