Florence Morphy and Ivo Bligh — Cricket's Great Love Story, 1882-83

Sir William Clarke, son of the wealthiest man in Australia, had transformed Rupertswood into a country house on the English model, complete with cricket ground, private station and house guests drawn from the colonial elite. Lady Janet Clarke was a leading Melbourne hostess; Florence Morphy, in her early twenties, was a permanent member of her circle.

Bligh's tourists, who had set sail in September 1882 promising to 'recover the Ashes' invented by the Sporting Times that summer, lost the first Test at Melbourne badly but won the next two. The Christmas break at Rupertswood fell between the Sydney Tests, and the festive scratch match and presentation became cricket's most consequential country-house weekend.

Florence Rose Morphy was born in Beechworth, Victoria, in 1860. By her early twenties she was working at Rupertswood, the Italianate mansion built by Sir William Clarke on the railway line at Sunbury, Victoria. Her formal duties were to teach music to the Clarke children and act as companion to Lady Janet Clarke, but in practice she was at the centre of the household's social life.

In December 1882 Sir William and Lady Clarke welcomed Bligh's touring English team to Rupertswood for Christmas. A scratch match was played on the estate ground between Bligh's men and a side of locals organised by Sir William, after which — according to the most often told version — a bail (or possibly the burnt remains of a veil belonging to Lady Clarke) was placed in a small terracotta perfume jar and presented to Bligh as 'the ashes of Australian cricket'. The presentation was made by Lady Clarke, Florence Morphy and other women of the house; an embroidered velvet bag was made for the urn either at this presentation or after the series.

Bligh was reportedly smitten with Florence from their first meeting. After his side recovered the Ashes by winning two of the three serious Tests of the 1882-83 series, he stayed on in Australia for several extra weeks, became engaged to Florence, and finally returned home in mid-1883.

On 9 February 1884 they were married at the chapel at Rupertswood, the Clarkes meeting most of the costs and giving the bride away. The newlyweds honeymooned in New Zealand and Tasmania before returning to Cobham Hall in Kent, the seat of the Earls of Darnley which Ivo would inherit on his elder brother's death in 1900.

Florence accompanied the urn back to England and kept it on the mantelpiece at Cobham Hall through her husband's lifetime. After Ivo's death in April 1927, she presented the urn to MCC, where it has since lived in the museum at Lord's. She herself was made DBE in 1919 for war work and died in 1944, eight decades after first being introduced to the young English captain at Sunbury.

“Florence Rose Morphy presented the urn to Ivo Bligh — and her hand to him not long afterwards.”

The urn travelled with Bligh and Florence to Cobham Hall, where for over forty years it sat as a private memento on the mantelpiece — there was no campaign at the time to make it the official Ashes trophy. Only after Ivo's death and Florence's gift to MCC did the urn become the public symbol it is today.