Earliest references to cricket in English and Welsh counties

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This article records the first known references to cricket being played in the historic counties of England and Wales. Dates for the countries of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales are also included.

Note: Online databases are excluded from this page as the scope is historical, and NOT statistical.

List

Surrey – c.1550 re John Derrick as a boy, and the 1597 Old Style (1598 New Style) Guildford court case; the world's earliest definite mention of cricket^[1]^[2]
Kent – c.1610 re the match at Chevening, the world's oldest known organised match^[3]
Sussex – 1611 re an ecclesiastical court case^[4]
Hampshire – 1647 at Winchester College^[5]
London – 1617 re Oliver Cromwell^[6]
Oxfordshire – 1673 at the University of Oxford^[7]
Middlesex – 1680; also the first mention re umpires^[8]
Cambridgeshire – 1710 at the University of Cambridge^[9]

Essex – 1724 re the Chingford-Stead match^[10]
Berkshire – 1727 at Eton College^[11]
Gloucestershire – 1729^[11]
Buckinghamshire – 1730^[12]
Hertfordshire – 1732^[13]
Dorset – 1738^[14]
Bedfordshire – 1741^[15]
Huntingdonshire – 1741^[15]
Northamptonshire – 1741^[15]
Suffolk – 1743^[11]
Norfolk – 1745^[11]
Scotland – 1750 re a military match in Perth^[16]

Durham – 1751^[17]
Somerset – 1751^[18]
Warwickshire – 1751^[19]
Yorkshire – 1751^[17]
Northumberland – 1753^[20]
Derbyshire – 1757^[16]
Wales and Glamorgan – 1771 re local matches in Swansea^[21]
Nottinghamshire – 1771^[22]
Wiltshire – c.1774^[23]^{[note 1]}
Leicestershire – 1776^[24]
Cheshire – 1781^[24]

Lancashire – 1781^[24]
Rutland – 1790^[25]
Ireland – 1792 re a military match in Dublin^[25]
Lincolnshire – 1792^[25]
Shropshire – 1794^[25]
Devon – 1799^[26]
Cornwall – 1813^[27]
Staffordshire – 1817^[27]
Herefordshire – 1823^[28]
Westmorland – 1827^[28]
Cumberland – 1828^[28]
Worcestershire – 1829^[28]

See also

Notes

[1]
There is no certainty about when cricket was first mentioned in Wiltshire. Rowland Bowen gave 1769 as the first date, but he had mistakenly ascribed a Hampshire venue to Wiltshire. John Major, writing about an event in 1799, stated that cricket had been played in the towns of Calne, Devizes, Salisbury, and Marlborough 'for a quarter of a century'.

References

Bibliography

Further reading

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