#burley

Lord Winchilsea Raises an England XI at Burley-on-the-Hill — August 1800

In August 1800 George Finch-Hatton, ninth Earl of Winchilsea — co-founder of the MCC and the most important patron of late-Hambledon cricket — staged one of his last great country-house matches at his Rutland seat, Burley-on-the-Hill. He brought down a near-Test-strength England XI to play a combined Rutland and Leicestershire side in front of a paying gallery on the lawn below the great house. The fixture is one of the clearest pieces of evidence we have that the patron-led model of major cricket survived into the new century, even as the MCC at Lord's was beginning to absorb its functions.