FS Ashley-Cooper

FS ASHLEY-COOPER

 The first two subjects in this series, Desmond Eagar and Harry Altham both played first-class cricket for the county, were centrally involved in the management of the County Club from the end of the War through the next few decades and while Eagar’s historical work was mainly about Hampshire, Altham is known for a broader perspective. This third subject is a man who had no direct link with the club, is said never to have played cricket and apparently did not watch it that often.

One of the great cricket historians, Peter Wynne-Thomas(2003) published his “biographical sketch and bibliography” of that man, Frederick Samuel Ashley-Cooper, identifying him as being “the first person to successfully integrate the history cricket with the game’s statistical record” while also creating “the format for modern cricket records” (3). Despite his comprehensive work and little specific link to Hampshire,Ashley-Cooper (born London, March 1877) warrants his inclusion in this series for at least four publications, two of which, both published in 1924, are important contributions to the history of Hampshire cricket. The first was The Hambledon Cricket Chronicle 1772-1796 by Ashley-Cooper with another noted historian EV Lucas adding an Introduction, while the second was rather more an A5pamphlet of 36 pages with semi-stiff boards, entitled simply Hampshire County Cricket – our first history and “published with the approval of the Hampshire County Cricket Club” at a cost of one shilling (5p). 

He warrants inclusion further for his research work on HS Altham’s A History of Cricket, while in 1927 he published a Christmas card of “Mead’s Hundreds: a Note” - Mead incidentally would score a further 48 centuries after 1927 (153 overall). There is a peculiarity with his work with Altham first published in 1925, in which Altham wrote of Ashley-Cooper’s help and “great kindness” since he “read through and made many corrections … (and) again and again …helped me on points of detail and policy”. He added that Ashley-Cooper’s “accuracy and … inexhaustible cricket learning present a standard after which all other cricket historians must despairingly aspire”. Oddly, in the revised Preface of a new edition in 1962, Altham acknowledged various contributors but omitted this reference to Ashley-Cooper.

In total it is said Ashley-Cooper wrote 103 cricket books and pamphlets and for more than 30 years he was responsible for the ‘Births and Deaths’ and ‘Cricket Records’ in Wisden. He was also a great collector; Irving Rosewater (1976) suggested it was only his huge body of printed works that “dwarfed his position as a collector”, when from the mid-1920s he was “the undisputed leader in the field” (24).

After the First World War Ashley-Cooper had access to the minutes and accounts of the legendary eighteenth century Hambledon Club which in the Foreword to his publication, he said were “now reproduced for the first time” (xiii). He opened his first chapter suggesting “the story of the Hambledon Club is one of the most remarkable in the whole history of cricket” and a century ago did his best to dispel a myth that nonetheless persists when he wrote

If Hambledon cannot strictly be regarded as ‘The Cradle of Cricket’ it can at least claim to have been the centre in which the game was first brought to a certain degree of perfection. (17)

Early in that chapter and without examining the point he also writes of the formation of the Hambledon Club and “its team”(my emphasis), which reminds us that the Hambledon Club (not Cricket Club) enjoyed a range of social activities, including but not exclusively cricket and a team which is now mostly recorded over that great period as ‘Hampshire’.

Ashley-Cooper explained the “decline” of the Hambledon Club from 1787 when “the chief amateurs and patrons” chose to move to the “convenient” London location and formed MCC, where “in Lord’s the leading professionals soon found a ready market for their talent” (20). He reveals also that during the early 1790s Hambledon’s members resigned regularly so that for example, at a meeting on 16 May, Mr Oliver, Mr Shakespear, Mr Boult, Col. Sherriff, Captain Thresher, Col. Hammond, Captain Linzee, Mr Hale and Lord Stawell (requested by Mr Ridge) all withdrew their memberships, while only the Hon. Captain Conway was elected to fill the gaps. One week later, no members attended on a day when the minutes reported “Rain’d, very cold”.

The entry “No Gentlemen” appears quite frequently, as well as variations such as “three members and six non-subscribers present”, but is perhaps best known on 21 September 1796 which is taken to be the end of the Club, 25 years after the first “Order of the Club”, listing the Steward and others Members present and the six Standing Toasts. 

Elsewhere, there are many fascinating details of life around 250 years ago in east Hampshire. In July 1773 we find an agreement that in future

Wicketts (sic) shall be Pitched at half an hour after Ten o’Clock in the morn. and the players that come after Eleven are to forfeit 3d each to be spent among those that come at the appointed time of Eleven.

A little while later, “Green Base” (sic) should be purchased to “Cover the seats of the Tent for the Ladies”. Further, we learnif in any discussion the President or in his absence the Steward require the topic to cease, any member “so disputing shall forfeit one Doz: of Claret to the Club”. That is by no means the only reference to claret or wine more generally.

Ashley-Cooper opened with his own “Survey” but for the most part he collected, edited and re-presented information from the time. He listed all the minutes verbatim, followed by the Match List including a column referring to entries in Scores and Biographies and “a few notes on the matches”. In the years since, more information has been discovered about the matches including additional games but the list provided a full foundation a century ago. Chapter Four lists “The Club Accounts”, from 1791, beginning with the names of Gentlemen Subscribers paying the annual membership of three guineas (£3.3s) each and adding frequent references to payment for the players. Chapter Five lists “every person of whom it can be said with certainty that he was a member of the Club” (143), followed (Chapter Six) by a biographical list of the Players. The book concludes with various brief appendices including the words to the club song and it is illustrated throughout with scenes around Hambledon, the Bat & Ball Inn, the ground, the players and key members. 

The Hambledon Cricket Chronicle remains one of the essential foundations of our understanding of early first-class cricket in Hampshire and Ashley-Cooper refers again to the days of Hambledon in the earliest history of the county club from the same year in which he pays attention to the years between the end of the Hambledon Club and 60+ years later the formation of Hampshire County Cricket Club before moving into the initial and rather fragmented first-class period until they entered the County Championship in 1895. Once again the publication is enhanced by a number of good black & white photographs including teams of 1888 and 1923, the grounds in Portsmouth, Bournemouth and a beautifully evocative centre spread of Southampton. There are images also of key figures including Sir Russell Bencraft, Major the Hon. LH Tennyson, Captain TO Jameson, Philip Mead and his fellow professionals Kennedy, Livsey, Brown, Bowell, Boyes, Newman plus illustrations of Bishop Ken who reported seeing cricket in Winchester in the mid-17th century and Thomas Chamberlayne the county club’s first Chairman. 

The impressive booklet covered a period of more than 150 years and in a few places was almost like an alternative Handbook with information about Hampshire memberships and a list of fixtures for 1924 - including two Club & Ground games in Basingstoke and the Isle of Wight. It also included eleven advertisements including on the back cover the sports shop in London Road, Southampton owned by Phil Mead and Walter Toomer (late of Southampton FC). 

Along with The Hambledon Cricket Chronicle, that Hampshire history was one of four county histories Ashley-Cooper produced in the one year of 1924 – the others, Somerset, Derbyshire and Gloucestershire, to which he added an Appendix updating a previous history of Kent. He was nothing if not prolific.

In addition to his extensive work for Wisden, Ashley-Cooper contributed many items to the magazines Cricket (1896-1911) and The Cricketer (from 1921) as well as the Athletic New Cricket Annual (from 1914). He was never particularly robust and when he died in Milford, Surrey in January 1932 the Annual noted cricket had “suffered a real loss” of an historian and statistician who, “in all his work … was meticulously and really marvellously accurate”. In the following year, Weston (1933) suggested he was at the time probably “the greatest Authority on the History of Cricket”.

Sources:

Weston, G Neville, 1933 Bibliography of the Cricket Works of the Late FS Ashley-Cooper, privately published.

Rosenwater I, 1976, Cricket Books: Great Collectors of the Past, privately published.

Wynne-Thomas P, 2003, FS Ashley-Cooper: A Biographical Sketch & Bibliography, Association of Cricket Statisticians & Historians.

Special thanks for his help to my HCH colleague & friend Glen Williams.

Dave Allen

August 2025