Eton School Fives in the 1850s
Extract from the Suffolk Record OfficeThe Cranworth Papers
The Ipswich branch of the Suffolk Record Office houses the Cranworth papers (ref. HA 54). Among them are a number of items from the private papers of two Old Etonian brothers of the 1840s and 1850s (HA54/1 618 - 622 and 668 - 681).
HA 54/1/622 (papers of W B Gurdon) includes an account of games at Eton in an unspecified year which can be identified from other sources as 1857. On pages 64 to 66 is an item headed Fives Challenge Cups. It gives an account of the first competition for "2 challenge cups given by Messrs Joynes and J Hawtrey for the best Fives players". The competition took place over at least two days. The winners were Bagge and Norman, with, it seems, Hoare minor and Yonge (sic) minor as runners up. The first Fives honours board near the Fives courts and Eton School List confirm that the year was 1857. School Lists identify Bagge and Norman as Thomas Edward Bagge and Frederick Henry Norman and show that Yonge minor should read Young minor. Gurdon had confused two pairs of brothers, Yonge and Young
Messrs Joynes and J Hawtrey were Eton House Masters who seem to have been keenly interested in Fives. In 1863 Hawtrey moved with his boys to the new house with two Fives courts which he had recently built "near the Gas Works". (ACA p.14 v.inf). The Reverend James Leigh Joynes (of whom there was a portrait in "Vanity Fair" ACA p.236) was a "good athlete with.........a still flourishing reputation as one of the best Fives players Eton has known".
Ainger also tells us (ACA p.176); that the names of the winners of the Fives were oral until they were codified in 1870 (ACA p.176); that the names of the winners of the Fives were first recorded in 1857 (ACA p.177) and that there were no Keepers until 1867.
A.C.A. - Ainger, A.C. Eton Sixty Years Ago John Murray, 1917.
E A Shortland-Jones May 2001
Constructed by Mike Fenn
22 June 2001
efa@etonfives.co.uk