HE IS INTERESTED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 302, 21 December 1935, Page 11

HE IS INTERESTED.

PORT OF LYTTELTON.

M.C.C. CRICKETER'S FAMILY.

NAMESAKE TOURS DOMINION,

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, this day.

One of the M.C.C. cricket team, the Hon. C. J. Lyttelton, is eagerly awaiting the opportunity of visiting Canterbury because of an interesting persoi.al association. A son of Lord Cobhani, president of the Marylebone Cricket Glub, he is a direct descendant of Lord Lyttelton, one of the founders of the Canterbury Association, and whose name was given to the port of Canterbury. It was during a reception tendered by the Government to the team that the cricketer with the familiar New Zealand name confided to the Hon. F. Jones, Postmaster-General, his intense interest in Lyttelton port, for the reason that it was named after one of his ancestors.

"You must meet the Mayor of Christchurch," was the Postmaster-General's suggestion, and soon the Hon. D. G. Sullivan was talking Canterbury history with the visiting cricketer.

When the inevitable moment came for a photograph this incident at the social gathering was celebrated by taking a picture of th* Hon. C. J. Lyttelton with the Mayor of Christchurch and the Hon. P. Eraser, who had also been interested in the personal association of the visitor with an important phase of tho Dominion's history.

Arrangements are being made by the Mayor of Christelmrch that the civic officers will greet the bearer of the historic name when he arrives in Lyttelton and show him how the port and the province have developed within the span of a lifetime.

The ancestor of the Hon. C. J. Lyttelton, Lord George William Lyttelton, held the office of Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies in Peel's last administration, and being deeply interested in colonial and church questions, he became chairman in 1849 of th« Cknterburj,

Association, in which the prime mover* were EdwaTd Gibbon Wakefield and «L R» Godley. Lord Lyttelton visited Canterbury la 18G7-8, and on his return to Englanddescribed his experiences in two lectures. Several of his sons were distinguished; cricketers, and one, Kobert Henry Lyttelton, wrote a book on the game, whilw his brother Alfred was described as an , . admirable wicket-keeper. And the family tradition is being well maintained by th» visitor, who in due, course will see M» "namesake" port.