The earliest documented cricket match at Christ's Hospital School — the historic 'Bluecoat' charity school in central London — was a house fixture played in the summer of 1831. Cricket had been informal at Christ's Hospital from the late eighteenth century; the 1831 match is the earliest preserved with a full account in the school's surviving records.
Christ's Hospital had been founded in 1552 and occupied a substantial site in the City of London at Newgate Street through the nineteenth century. Cricket had been played informally on the school courts since the 1790s but no organised fixture record survives before 1831. The summer 1831 inter-house match — Grecian House v Modern House — is the earliest with a preserved scoresheet. Cricket at the school continued through the nineteenth century; the school moved to Horsham in Sussex in 1902 and continues to play first-class school cricket there.
1552
Christ's Hospital founded
Summer 1831
Earliest documented cricket fixture
1902
School moves to Horsham
The earliest documented cricket at one of London's historic schools.
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1831-03-09
On 9 March 1831 Thomas 'Old Everlasting' Walker — the most famous defensive batter of the Hambledon school and one of the last surviving regulars of the great 1780s side — died at Churt, Surrey, in his early seventies. With Beldham still alive but long retired, Walker's death effectively closed the personal lineage of Hambledon cricket as a presence in the contemporary game.
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1831-11-05
On 5 November 1831 George Osbaldeston rode 200 miles on Newmarket Heath in 8 hours 42 minutes, using a string of relay horses, for a wager of 1,000 guineas. The ride was the most celebrated single sporting feat of the Regency era — repeating in equestrian form the 1818 pedestrian feat and confirming Osbaldeston as the most flamboyant amateur sportsman of his generation. He had been an MCC committee member since his 1828 reconciliation with Beauclerk.
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1832-11-15
In November 1832 the Cape Town Cricket Club was formally constituted with a committee, a subscription roll and a leased ground at Green Point Common. The founding was the institutional successor to the garrison cricket that had been documented in 1819 and is the foundation entry of organised civilian cricket in South Africa. Cape Town CC is one of the oldest constituted cricket clubs in the southern hemisphere.