The White Heather Club, founded in 1887 in Yorkshire, continued through the 1910s as the most prominent organised women's cricket club in England, playing exhibition matches and serving as the bridge between Victorian and modern women's cricket.
The White Heather Club had been formed in 1887 by Lucy Wedgwood, the Countess of Bessborough, Lady Idina Brassey and others — a determinedly upper-class enterprise.
By the 1910s the club had been playing for over twenty years, mostly fixtures in Yorkshire country house circuits.
The White Heather Club was founded by aristocratic women in Yorkshire in 1887 — the first organised women's cricket club of the modern era. Through the 1910s it continued to play exhibition matches against male teams, country house sides and other women's clubs, mostly in Yorkshire and the south of England. The First World War, like everything else, disrupted its activities; by 1915 the club had effectively suspended fixtures as members took up nursing or war work. It resumed after the war but never recovered its pre-war prominence. Its real importance is as the institutional thread between the Victorian women's cricket experiments and the formation of the Women's Cricket Association in 1926. The 1910s were a quiet, modest decade for women's cricket — there were no Tests, no national tournaments, just dispersed club fixtures — but the activity continued and the foundations were preserved.
1887 (background): WHC founded
1910s: Regular exhibition fixtures against men's and women's sides
1914-18: Most fixtures suspended for the war
1919: Limited resumption of activity
1887
WHC founded
1910s
Continues with regular exhibition fixtures
1914-18
Activities largely suspended for the war
1926
WCA formed; tradition continues
“The lady cricketers of the White Heather Club have given the country house circuit some of its most amusing afternoons.”
The Women's Cricket Association was founded in 1926; the White Heather Club's tradition flowed into it. The first women's Test was played in 1934.
A quiet but unbroken decade for organised women's cricket in England, with the White Heather Club as the principal carrier of the tradition.
Without the small number of clubs like White Heather that kept women's cricket alive through the 1910s, the WCA's launch in 1926 would have lacked any institutional precedent.
Yorkshire v Essex
1932-06-16
On 15-16 June 1932 Herbert Sutcliffe (313) and Percy Holmes (224*) put on 555 for the first wicket against Essex at Leyton, breaking the world first-class record for any wicket and adding a layer of folklore — including a scoreboard that read 554 for several minutes and a hastily reversed declaration — that has clung to the partnership ever since.
Australia v England
1933-02-14
With the fate of the Bodyline series in the balance and England 216 for 6 chasing 340, Eddie Paynter checked himself out of a Brisbane hospital where he was being treated for acute tonsillitis, taxied to the Gabba in pyjamas and a dressing gown, and batted for nearly four hours to score 83. England drew level on first innings, won the Test by six wickets and the series 4-1.
Australia
1934-09-25
Days after the 1934 Oval Test, Bradman fell seriously ill with appendicitis that progressed to peritonitis. With antibiotics not yet available, he was given little chance of survival; his wife Jessie left Adelaide on a sea voyage to England prepared for the worst. He recovered after weeks of intensive nursing in a London nursing home and returned to first-class cricket the following Australian summer.