Glory by the Gasometers

It's now autumn and after a glorious summer of sport – although football didn’t quite come home – it’s time to look at a great London sporting monument that has chalked up a trophy cupboard of heritage firsts. No, not Lords, Wimbledon or Wembley, or even the White City Stadium (the world’s first purpose-built Olympic arena of the modern era) but the Kennington Oval.

Kennington Common, on the southern side of the Thames, had been used as a venue for cricket matches since 1724. However, the location was an inauspicious one: a scrappy piece of agricultural land filled with cabbage patches and asparagus beds, which was also a place of rabble-rousing oration and of public execution (of which more later…). By the 1790s a new oval-shaped roadway had been laid out in the area, with the idea being to lease plots in and around it as a pleasant place to build suburban houses or continue to market garden. The former never materialised, but the shape of the enclosed land was perfect for the creation of a new sports ground. In 1845 a lease was signed by William Houghton, President of the Montpelier Club, ‘who was desirous… of converting it into a Subscription Cricket Ground’, after the club lost their home venue at nearby Walworth. The Montpelier originally shared the ground with the newly formed Surrey County Cricket Club, which is now its sole occupier (the landlord remains the Duchy of Cornwall, hence the Surrey club is permitted to use the Prince of Wales feathers on their badge).

After the ground had been suitably prepared using 10,000 turves brought from Tooting and one of the market-garden buildings converted to a member’s pavilion and office, The Oval was open for business.

Such was the success of the ground that the old market-garden pavilion was soon replaced by a bespoke building in 1855, and then again rebuilt almost entirely in 1895-97 to a design by Thomas Muirhead of Manchester. Muirhead was chosen as a leading sporting architect of his day, and had just completed the pavilion at Old Trafford, Manchester. His distinctive red-brick building at the Oval allowed three tiers of supporters to cheer their team (or perhaps clap politely… this is cricket after all…) from a genteel setting, framed by turrets that would not look out of place at Charlton House, with a central roof-top clock – the entire structure has a distinctly Jacobean feel about it.

In terms of sporting heritage, the ground is important for many reasons. For example, in 1868, 20,000 people turned up to watch the first overseas tour by any Australian sportsmen – fascinatingly, the touring cricketers were members of the Aboriginal Cricket team. Their outstanding all-rounder was Unnarrimin, A.K.A. Jonny Mullagh, who scored 1698 runs and took 245 wickets during the 47 matches they played during their time in England.

Outside of the matches the team were narrowly beaten in a cricket-ball-throwing competition by an up-and-coming 20-year-old Englishman by the name of W. G Grace… Roll forward 12 years, and the Oval was the first English cricket ground to host an official Test match with the visiting Australian team. England won a thrilling game with that man W. G. Grace, now 32 years old, scoring 152, the first home Test century.

Interestingly, from the very outset the grounds were not just about cricket: Houghton, the original lessee, needed to recoup his debts so was given approval to set up a pub for spectators – the licence was soon revoked after complaints of raucous behaviour. Later he sought permission for ‘Pedestrianism…’ a walking match for 1000 people over 1000 hours, and the exhibition of poultry – both were denied. In 1875 the Duchy clarified that only ‘…Cricket, Baseball, Football, Tennis, Fives and Racquets and Amateur Athletic Sports…’ could be played. Despite this, consent to construct a roller-skating rink was awarded a year later in 1876.

Which takes us neatly to a long list of non-cricketing firsts claimed at the ground, including the first representative England vs. Scotland football match which took place in 1870 – albeit it is not considered the earliest international between the two nations because the Scotland players were all London-based. Four other games were played between the two sides at the Oval before the first recognised international game held in Glasgow in 1872. Arguably, the Oval is also the spiritual home of the FA Cup – the first ever FA Cup Final was played there, also in 1872, where a crowd of 2000 people turned up to watch Wanderers from Leytonstone beat Royal Engineers 1-0. The ground was to host most of the FA Cup Finals and Semi-finals for the next decade. Appropriately, there’s history with the oval ball too – again in 1872 (which must have been a sport-mad year!), the Oval was the venue for the first England vs. Scotland Rugby Union international to be played in England.

Ironically, one of the most significant characteristics of The Oval is to be found not within the ground, but outside it. During the latter half of the 19th century the Phoenix Gas Light & Coke Company built five gasholders around the Oval. These flexible tanks within a cylindrical iron skeleton were for storing coal gas made nearby. One has since been demolished, but Gasholder 1, which overlooks the ground and was once the largest in the world, is now protected as Grade II Listed building. Given the proximity of a ready supply of gas, it is no surprise that in 1889, The Oval boasted yet another first – this time for the earliest artificial lighting of a sporting arena.

At the beginning of this article I promised another death, continuing the area’s tradition as an ancient place of execution. In 1882, the Oval was the ground where Australia beat England prompting the following mock obituary in The Sporting Times: