LCS Meeting Thursday 16th November 2017

Our guest Dr. Dean Allen

Another very different night for the cricket society, as our guest for the evening, Dean Allen, took

us on a journey, to the cape colony of South Africa, in the 1890’s.

His talk centred on this small town of Matjiesfontein

and a man from the border country between England and Scotland.

James Logan

"Matjiesfontein". The name was derived from a type of sedge, Cyperus textilis,

used by Khoekhoen people to make mats (matjies)

(my apologies for the poor quality photo’s, they were affected by the florescent lights)

Dean told us that it was the wealth, that gold, diamonds and the railway made,

that brought the famous English Cricketers of the time to a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Firstly, the thanks of society members and committee go to the County, for the way the Charles

Palmer suite is always set out so well for our meetings. The room is always clean, chairs set out

and if our guest for the night, request a screen or an extension lead, or an extra table, these are

provided by John Stew and his staff, before the meeting

It was with this in mind that your committee were asked by Mirella Sturgess, if they would consider

buying a new industrial vacuum cleaner. Some members may remember that the society bought a

cleaner about seven or eight years ago for the same purpose. The committee were pleased to be

able on behalf of the membership to pay for the cleaner. Some newer members may not be

aware; the County makes the pavilion available for society meetings free of charge.

So the LCS was very pleased to present a new cleaner to Mirella.

Howard is pointing out that it is ready equipped with a plug

Dean had copies of the book his discoveries eventually lead to for sale

As always good to see the front row lads on parade nice and early.

At 7:20 our audience looked a bit thin on the ground but by start time, we had about 120 people in

the room, Dean commented on the fantastic turn out our society gets,

Howard normally introduces our speaker with their career stats and a bit of background to their

playing days, but he said this time, he had to speak about the academic background of Dean

Allen, Howard said that our guest originated from Somerset, is a lecturer, historian, author, a

senior academic at Bournemouth university, a research associate at Stellenbosch university and

has lectured in many countries.

At the very start of his talk Dr. Allen laid out the basic outline of what he would be talking about

and the main character in that talk James Logan

As you can see his talk was accompanied by a lot of slides, to illustrate the tremendous amount of

names, dates and a lot more facts that came with this story. A very articulate and obviously

knowledgeable man, who had been studying this subject for a considerable amount of time, before

being able to condense all that information into a book. What I found to be a feat of tremendous

memory was that Dean did a talk lasting 75 minutes without a single note. Without a copy of every

slide and the accompanying text, it will be very difficult to do this meeting any justice.

This is James Logan later in life when he has become rich and

powerful, and able to attract cricket teams from England, to play at his own ground.

This is just one slide of many that Dean showed us of

famous cricketers and cricket teams of that time, who travelled to this little town miles off the

beaten track, as Dean put it.

Anyone who has read older cricket books will

have seen the name Lord Hawke, one other famous name in this team is C.B.Fry.

You can tell from the expressions that the audience was held by the passion that Dean put into

his presentation. My mate Harry Simmonds at the end of the first row.

This is a very early plan of Matjiesfontein, that Dean showed us, I think he said that the cricket

ground was the plot of land on the extreme right and in the middle, you can just make out some

writing.

One of the first slides that Dean showed us, Newlands, Cape Town, with Table Mountain and the

Castle Brewery in the background, not a bad backdrop to watch a day’s cricket.

Roger Stead on the right, found us yet another diverse evening’s entertainment.

The man on the left, is the person who held

all the Logan archive material, and made it possible for Dean to write his book.

Again I apologise for the poor quality of the photos, it was only when starting this report, that I saw

how bad they are. But by then it was too late!

This is Logan’s house; it had electricity and flushing toilets.

Dean spoke about the large distances between places and at this time railways were the quickest

form of travel, Dean told us that even so it took almost a week to travel from Cape Town to

Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia

This is the Logan family

The copies of slides I have used to give you a very small idea of this talk are in no order at all,

and certainly not in the order that Dean choreographed his presentation.

This Young lady is Dean’s partner, sorry! I didn’t get her name,

but at the end of the night she was kind enough to help stack chairs and clean up the room.

Again the Friends of Grace Road were selling

their Christmas cards and other items. The mugs look a good present for county members!

You can see we had a decent turnout, our members really do support the meetings extremely well

At what normally would have been half time and with Dean in full flow, he spoke for well over a

hour, the raffle was slotted in somewhat later however it still raised another fantastic £93 for LCS

funds. The running total stands at £325. As always thank you for your support.

Society treasurer Robin Whait gave the formal vote of

thanks on behalf of the members.

The next meeting is on Thursday 7th December, when author Brian Scovell will be speaking.

The March 2018 meeting is now confirmed.

It will be on Thursday 15th March, when ex ECB 1st class umpire Steve Garrett, will be our guest.

Please tell members that you may know of this date.

Phil Veasey

on behalf of the LCS committee