W.G. Grace: Cricketing legend - in memoriam 1915 ... 2025 remembering one of our London Borough of Bromley most famous residents.
When the Olympic Games came to London in 2012 our local Bromley Museum rose to the occasion and staged an exhibition of sporting heroes of the borough. Top of the bill was the world’s most famous cricketer W.G. Grace. ‘The Doctor’ achieved legendary statistical feats of batting during his long career of more than forty years as a cricketer. This ran in parallel with his profession of a GP doctor: perhaps only the fictional Dr Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories can rival him for the amount of time that he took off from his practice! But W.G. Grace was no shirker: he was admired for his conscientious and caring attitude to his patients; this was quite unusual, by Victorian standards.
When the Olympic Games came to London in 2012 our local Bromley Museum rose to the occasion and staged an exhibition of sporting heroes of the borough. Top of the bill was the world’s most famous cricketer W.G. Grace. ‘The Doctor’ achieved legendary statistical feats of batting during his long career of more than forty years as a cricketer. This ran in parallel with his profession of a GP doctor: perhaps only the fictional Dr Watson in the Sherlock Holmes stories can rival him for the amount of time that he took off from his practice! But W.G. Grace was no shirker: he was admired for his conscientious and caring attitude to his patients; this was quite unusual, by Victorian standards.
W.G. Grace was born in Bristol and having lived most of his life in Gloucestershire he came to live in London in 1899, at first in Sydenham. He played his final first class match in 1908 at age sixty. In 1909 he moved to ‘Fairmont’ the big house in Mottingham Lane. Sherlock Holmes retired and quietly absorbed himself in bee-keeping. W.G. Grace quietly grew vegetables – and played the occasional game for Eltham cricket club. He is seated second from left, middle row, in the photo.
It is sad to think that the mighty Doctor was felled by a fatal stroke in 1915 – occasioned, it was said, by his seeing an enemy Zeppelin flying above his house, one day.
It is sad to think that the mighty Doctor was felled by a fatal stroke in 1915 – occasioned, it was said, by his seeing an enemy Zeppelin flying above his house, one day.
Is it a little cheeky for us to claim the legendary Doctor as one of ‘ours’ in the London Borough of Bromley? He only lived here during the latter six years of his life, long after his heyday as a famous household name cricketer. Mottingham Lane moreover is located on the very edge of the modern-day (since 1963) boundary of the London Borough of Kent. W.G. Grace’s house of residence at ‘Fairmont’ is featured in local histories of Eltham – a town that now lies within the London Borough of Greenwich. However, from 1894 to 1934, a period of time that covers the Doctor’s six-year period of residence, the village of Mottingham was contained within the county of Kent and was counted administratively as a detached part of Bromley Rural District. Combining that with the fact that the Doctor’s burial place is in Beckenham Cemetery within the boundary of the present-day Bromley borough, it seems legitimate for us to claim him for our own.
The earliest records of Mottingham date from AD862 and its Anglo-Saxon name of Modingahema translates as ‘This proud place’. Proud indeed to count W.G. Grace as a famous former resident and to commemorate him on the new village sign (2009) that also symbolizes Eltham College the famous school founded by missionaries and whose building and grounds stand within a cricket-bat six-hit distance from W.G. Grace’s blue plaque on the front of the big ‘Fairmont’ house.
When this splendid new village sign was unveiled in Mottingham in 2009 there was recital of a poem specially composed by Cray 150 author and artist Les Cheeseman. The poem was printed in A Cray Compendium (2014).
A Village Sign Two Thousand and Nine
From hamlet to village, Modingahema 862AD
Became Mottingham for all to see.
We now have a sign at last
To celebrate its historical past.
A plane tree, cricket bat and ball,
Eltham College once Fairy Hall:
The fields and farms have all gone;
Times have changed and we have moved on.
This village has had its share of fame:
Sporting legends but two to name
Eric Liddell and WG Grace
Once dwelt in this place.
This illustrates what the village is about
To fill us with joy and make us proud.
Hamlet to village marked the best of time,
And this is why we have our sign.
When this splendid new village sign was unveiled in Mottingham in 2009 there was recital of a poem specially composed by Cray 150 author and artist Les Cheeseman. The poem was printed in A Cray Compendium (2014).
A Village Sign Two Thousand and Nine
From hamlet to village, Modingahema 862AD
Became Mottingham for all to see.
We now have a sign at last
To celebrate its historical past.
A plane tree, cricket bat and ball,
Eltham College once Fairy Hall:
The fields and farms have all gone;
Times have changed and we have moved on.
This village has had its share of fame:
Sporting legends but two to name
Eric Liddell and WG Grace
Once dwelt in this place.
This illustrates what the village is about
To fill us with joy and make us proud.
Hamlet to village marked the best of time,
And this is why we have our sign.