The Artillery Ground and the long continuities of London life

The Bunhill Fields burial ground preserves the name of one of the three large fields (the others being Moorfields and Smithfield) that historically formed the Manor of Finsbury. The term field implies open land—land not used for the cultivation of crops but for the grazing of animals, the tenting of cloth (that is to say, the bleaching of linen in the sun), all kinds of sports and ball games, & so on—any activity that required space. I attribute to Peter Ackroyd the phrase “the long continuities of London life” though I can no longer trace the reference. It just may be that I heard him use the phrase in a lecture twenty or more years ago and it has resonated with me ever since.

The Finsbury fields were long a noted place for the practice of archery. A Child ballad (No 145B : “Robin Hood and Queen Katherine”), tells of an archery contest at Bunhill Fields :

          In summer time, when leaves grow green,
          It is a seemly sight to see
          How Robin Hood himself had drest,
          And all his yeomandry.

          He cloathed his men in Lincoln green,
          And himself in scarlet red,
          Black hats, white feathers, all alike ;
          Now bold Robin Hood is rid.

          And when he came at Londons court,
          Hee fell downe on his knee:
          ‘Thou art welcome, Locksly,’ said the queen,
          ‘And all thy good yeomendree.’

More about cricket and Blake

And what should they know of England who only England know?—KIPLING

What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?—JAMES

By the 1770s the game of cricket had reached a high level of development. It had recognized, accepted rules or—this being the eighteenth century—laws. It was played by teams sufficiently well known to attract large and enthusiastic crowds, and to arouse passionate local loyalties. In 1765 a crowd of 12,000 was reported to have attended a match of Dartford against Surrey at the Artillery Ground in Chiswell Street. The number of players was usually the same—eleven a side—though matches were sometimes played that involved fewer or more than that number. Bowling was underarm, and before the 1760s the ball came skimming at the batsman with only minimal bounce. Batting was no easy matter on the primitive, rough pitches that were the norm.

The bat was curved like a hockey stick, and it was only during the great days of the Hambledon club, in Hampshire, in the 1770s and 1780s that bowlers developed the knack of making the ball kick up at the batsman. This, as well as the addition of the third stump to the two widely spaced ones previously used, made it necessary to switch to the “straight” bat, more easily used with precision. The expression was later to become something like a metaphor for cricketing virtue.

William Blake and Cricket

When reading Blake’s earliest surviving writings, I find myself tantalised by the roads not taken: the precocious Augustan poet of the Poetical Sketches; or the broad comedy of the manuscript known, from its opening paragraph, as “An Island in the Moon”.

In the Moon, is a certain Island near by a mighty continent, which small island seems to have some affinity to England. & what is more extraordinary the people are so much alike & their language so much the same that you would think you was among your friends.

“An Island in the Moon” is a 17 page fragment written in pen and ink in Blake’s hand, and now in the Fitzwilliam Museum. It notably contains the earliest extant drafts of “Nurse’s Song”, “Holy Thursday”, and “The Little Boy Lost”, which were to make their first published appearance in his Songs of Innocence (1789).