FAMOUS LORD’S GROUND HAS BEEN BOMBED

Southland Times, Issue 24132, 22 May 1940, Page 10

FAMOUS LORD’S GROUND HAS BEEN BOMBED

The battle-ground of many famous Test matches, Lord’s cricket ground, on which an attendance limit of 15,000 has been placed in conformity with air raid precautions, is already war-scar-red, for a bomb dropped on it from an enemy aircraft on March 8, 1918. In the pavilion the M.C.C. still preserves the splintered remains of an entrance door showing rents and holes. Apparently not much damage was done to the ground for in June of that year an English team played a Dominion’s team, with everyone in khaki, for the Lord Roberts Memorial- Workshops and King George’s Fund for Sailors, before a crowd of 10,000. The Dominions side, which included Lieutenant C. Kellaway and Warrant Officer C. G, Macartney, won easily by 68 runs on the one Innings completed by the sides in this one-day match. In the English team wore Captain P. F.

Warner, Private E. Hendren, SergeantMajor H. T. W. Hardinge and LanceCorporal G. T. S. Stevens. Among other famous names that appear in the score sheets of later wartime matches are Air-Mechanic J. B. Hobbs, Private F. E. Woolley, Lieutenant P. G. H. Fender, Lance-Corporal G. Gunn, Colonel F. S. Jackson and Private Philip Head. Several charity and military matches have already been scheduled for Lord’s this summer, and classes for coaching in the normal Public Schools cricket have begun. ‘ That members are still loyal to the club can be deduced from the fact that about £l5OO of the normal £2600 in members’ subscriptions had been received by the middle of March. It is estimated that Lord’s will hold 32,000. That number attended a match in 1938, when the gates were closed.