Mildenhall Cricket Club has a marvellous archive of memories and information about the club going back through its history, including the various locations in the town.
These were started under the ‘That’s Over’ Project, and more has been added since. The move to the current site in the early 1970s is within living memory of some of its key members, and the archive includes oral history interviews that are available to listen to on the website.
Cricket team in 1902; part of the memory wall in the cricket club pavilion, about the new home for the club at Wamil Way
Several of these tell stories relating to the river Lark that runs alongside the cricket ground.
Peter Finnis:
“… for me sport was what filled the day really when I wasn’t at school or off down the football field or playing cricket outside so as I said a good upbringing and a sense of freedom to able to off and do what you wanted it was lovely. So swimming in the Wamil just down past the club here as well, you know all those sort of things. This place, this new ground I didn’t know would be our new ground. In the Lark that’s where I learnt to swim. So all these territories are great for us as youngsters they were real playgrounds they were. [You could roam around] in freedom, you would go off in the morning and you would come back at the end of the day and there was no worries about where you had been, parents weren’t panicking over not seeing you, knowing full well you would be back for a meal. They were great and of course if I had known at that time what a wonderful playground this was going to be for me as an adult later, amazing place now.”
Mike Kill:
“We … got advice from …an agronomist, he was an expert on grass and he came an looked at the situation and to make up the foundation of the square he advised us that we wouldn’t need drainage and having walked around the whole area, he did one or two tests at various times he told us that the soil on the riverbank was very very fertile of a type that would make up the square, give us a good cricket square, normally you would have used a heavy clay but he didn’t think we needed that and the soil was fertile because in years past I believe it was navigable, barges were pulled up to Mildenhall from what the West Row direction because there was a gas works in Mildenhall and they brought coal or coke to the gasworks and so they kept the river dredged and all these dredgings were just dumped on the riverbank and it was very very fertile soil. So that was brought back and the square was levelled and raked and raked and raked and got nice and flat and that was seeded with a special grass and the contractor moved away and it was left to us. As I say that was September seventy. …From then on at the time that first summer, spring and summer of seventy one we realised we had this grass to cut. So I said look I’ll make a start on it and I’m still doing it. I don’t know what it is 2019 quite a long time.”
Find out more on the Cricket Club website.
A more recent memory is of a hot summer day in 2013. The slope from the clubhouse down to the pitch was covered in a tarpaulin and soaked by sprinklers – everyone wanted to cool off… and to have fun racing and sliding down the slope!
This page expands on information about the cricket club on the Mildenhall & the river Lark display panel which is on the corner of the cricket ground, placed there with the active support of Mildenhall Cricket Club and Mildenhall Cycling Club. See the panel above and read more about the display panels.