Featured museum archive
The MCC Museum at Lord's
No need to be a cricket buff to enjoy this, said to be the oldest sports museum in the world.
If combined with a tour of the grounds it provides for one of the best days out in London. The Long Room alone is a treasure trove of fine art, while the futuristic Media Centre (designed by the ultra trendy architects, Future Systems), the Michael Hopkins-designed Mound Stand and the more recent Grandstand, by Nicholas Grimshaw, all rank highly amongst the best examples of modern sports architecture in Britain.
A bastion of privilege Lord's might be, but by goodness the MCC sure know how to commission good buildings, and it is as well to go sooner rather than later because there are current plans for more new construction. Meanwhile, two exhibitions currently running at the Lord's museum are well worth a visit. The first focuses on the life and career of Brian Lara.
The second is titled Going to the Cricket: 300 Years of English Fan Culture. Apparently this is the first time Lord's have concentrated on spectators rather than players, using a series of displays to tell the story of how spectating has evolved from alehouse regulars in the 18th century to the modern day Barmy Army.
The museum plans to expand the exhibition in 2009 with comparative displays about spectator culture in Australia and the Indian sub-continent, together with an exploration of wider themes such as the development of the media, art and literature, cricket memorabilia and famous fans.
Visitors are also being asked to contribute their own experiences as spectators and to imagine what the game might be like for cricket spectators in the future.
The exhibition is open on all match days between 10.00am and 5.00pm and on other days via the organised tours. For details call 020 7616 8596. Cost for matchday admission to the Museum is £3 adults, £1 concessions. Tours, including the museum, cost £12 for adults, £6 concessions.
Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum
The story of how lawn tennis emerged from its tentative beginnings in 1850s Birmingham to world wide popularity within three decades is one of the most remarkable tales in sporting history. But the vast majority of visitors to Wimbledon are of course fans of the present day champions.
As a result, the new Wimbledon museum, reopened in 2006 after a multi-million pound revamp - all of it privately funded - and shortlisted for European Museum of the Year 2008, treads a delicate balance between detailed analysis and the need to provide a populist 'experience'.
Some visitors might prefer more social and historical detail, such as how the game originated and then rapidly colonised the suburbs, and less on the stars of today. It is also a shame that because the new location is in a basement, with no room to expand, more space has not been found for the museum's superb collection of tennis-related decorative arts, which featured more prominently in the old location.
However, these are relatively minor quibbles, and there are several superb features, including a 200 degree screen showing one set in a Sharapova match from 2005, analysing some 20 different aspects of modern play, equipment design, sports science and broadcasting. There's far too much accompanying information for anyone over 30 to take in, but it's an eye-opener all the same. Also recommended is a series of short films in which characters in an oil painting of a Victorian tennis garden party speak about their relationship with tennis.
We recommend visiting on a non-championship day in order to take more time, and also to book in advance a visit to the museum's Kenneth Ritchie Library, which has an unrivalled collection of tennis related books, periodicals and videos.
Architecture buffs should also note that there is a special exhibition about the Centre Court redevelopment opening in April.
Displayed above is an early lawnmower, which, as explained, was one of two technological breakthroughs that allowed the game to evolve. The other was the vulcanisation of rubber, enabling the manufacture of air-filled balls that bounced on turf.
Dorking Museum
If you like your museums small, friendly and gimmick-free Dorking is a real pleasure. During our researches for Uppies and Downies we came across this unusual artefact, the only tangible reminder of Shrove Tuesday football in the town, designed to carry the three balls played for each year.
No-one is certain what the inscription 'Wind & water is Dorking's glory' signifies, the best guess being that it referred to the wind in the inflated balls and the water of the brook into which play frequently strayed. It is also known that in later years, before the game was banned in 1897, the inscription was prefixed with 'Kick away both Whig and Tory' (again, for reasons we can only imagine).
The balls themselves are not the originals, and nor are historians sure of the exact colours used, since according to the recollections of locals they seemed to vary from year to year. In the final fateful year of 1897 the two side balls were painted black, as if in mourning.
But the ball at the top - the 'five o'clocker' (that is, the final and most fiercely contested of the three) was always gold, as was also the case at Kingston, where Shrove Tuesday football was banned in 1868.
Warwickshire County Cricket Museum at Edgbaston
In 1913 a young author was at Cheltenham to see Gloucestershire play Warwickshire, one of whose bowlers had a distinctive action. Three years later, pondering a name for one of his characters, he recalled the bowler, and the name stuck. The bowler's identity? Percy Jeeves. The author? PG Wodehouse. This is the county cap worn by Jeeves in 1914, his last season before being killed at the Somme in 1916. It is now on display at the Warwickshire County Cricket Club museum at Edgbaston, the only sports museum in the Birmingham area. Incidentally, the bear and ragged staff on the cap derive from the Warwickshire coat of arms (which is why Warwickshire's nickname is The Bears).
Among the other exhibits that took our eye were the charming Norman Edwards cartoons of Warwickshire players from the 1950s and 1960s. Edwards also drew cartoon histories of Aston Villa, Birmingham, Wolves and WBA and is very much part of sporting history in the West Midlands.
The Edgbaston museum is small, informal and traditional, and no worse for that. But out-of-season opening hours are limited so see the website if you are planning to visit between September and April.