Fuller Pilch's Kent Engagement and the Move to Canterbury — 1842 onward

Kent cricket in the 1830s was centred on Town Malling under Thomas Selby's proprietorship. Selby's £100 retainer for Pilch was an unprecedented professional contract.

Through the late 1830s Selby's financial position deteriorated and the Kent county cricket interest began to shift towards Canterbury. The first Canterbury Week of 1842 was the formal start of the move.

Pilch had been engaged by Thomas Selby, proprietor of the Town Malling ground, on a reputed retainer of £100 a year — at a time when the standard professional match fee was £3-£5. The contract paid Pilch to be at Selby's disposal as player and as host of the inn (Pilch ran a public house at Town Malling alongside his cricket). The arrangement was the model for the more developed county engagements of later decades. Through the early 1840s Pilch played at Town Malling whenever Kent's home matches were staged there, but the ground's geography (small, awkwardly situated) and Selby's commercial difficulties were already pushing Kent towards Canterbury, which had the social weight of a cathedral town and the support of the county families. The first Canterbury Week — a festival of cricket combined with theatre, balls and racing — was held in 1842. By 1847 Canterbury had displaced Town Malling as the principal Kent venue and Pilch had moved with it, taking over the Saracen's Head Inn at Canterbury. The Canterbury Week remained an annual fixture into the twenty-first century, the longest continuously staged cricket festival in the world.

Pilch played for Kent until the early 1850s and continued to run the Saracen's Head until his death in 1870. The Canterbury Week, an unbroken annual fixture since 1842, is the longest continuously staged cricket festival in the world.