Lowerhouse Cricket Club Athletics Meeting 1887
We continue our occasional series chronicling the athletics festivals which were a financial lifeline for cricket clubs like Lowerhouse in Victorian times, with the year 1887 – the Jubilee Games, shortly followed by a dreadful accident at Dugdales’ Mill in Lowerhouse.
According to The Athletics News of 21
st June 1887, Lowerhouse’s annual “pleasant little fixture” was now the principal athletics meeting in the district, because Burnley CC had decided amateur only athletics were unprofitable, and their recent sports day had featured professionals, including some Burnley FC footballers, but was said to have been very poor, the highlight being the Cumberland and Westmoreland wrestling, also the “no gambling” rule had been widely ignored.
Saturday 18th June was a gloriously sunny day in Lowerhouse, and some 3,500 people were said to have attended. It was also Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee the following Tuesday, so they were rather grandly advertised as the Jubilee Games although the programme was the usual fare. There were several well known athletes in a good field of 135 competitors, and the Burnley Express wrote approvingly that there was no evidence of “placing”, i.e. race fixing, beforehand, “the public like to see genuine sport” and at Lowerhouse they were not disappointed, most of the heats and finals were closely contested and exciting. The track, which measured 280 yards, (six times round the ground plus 80 yards made a mile), had been especially well prepared for the cyclists.
To much surprise a local man called William Preston won the 100 yards at a canter, benefiting from 8 yards’ start in the final, but order was restored when a recognised athlete, D.F. Jackson, of Liverpool Gymnasium Harriers, won the quarter and the half mile.
More had been expected from J.C. Samuels, scratch man in the quarter mile, but who only came third. Samuels played cricket, rugby football for Wigan, at a time when rugby had not yet split into the two codes, and was also a very good runner. Two years earlier he had famously defeated Lon Myers the legendary American champion in a quarter mile race, some achievement even given a start of 22 yards, and the “Yankee” not liking a wet day in Wigan. His presence underlines the strength of the competition at the Lowerhouse event.
There were two one mile cycle races this time, one an open event, won by J.S. Cordingley of Haslingden for the second year in a row, and the other restricted to riders from a 6 mile radius, won by M. Watson of Burnley, F. Mitten of Colne came second and Burnley ace, Louis Calverley came third. Calverley was the scratch man, and gave the winner 80 yards start. The Express gives detailed reports on how the cycle races unfolded, and there is much mention of the riders having to work particularly hard “up the hill.”
J.S. Cordingley won his second electro plated silver tea service of the day when he also triumphed in the 2 mile cycle race. Jack Cordingley was such a good racing cyclist that he made an extremely good living out of it, initially as a cycle agent, then he set up in business as a cycle manufacturer and repairer, exporting his “Rossendale” bike world wide, before moving early into the motor cycle and car trade. He was involved in local politics, retired to Morecambe, where he served as Mayor, and died there in 1936, a very wealthy man.
The official handicapper, from “The Field” publication, had been asked to also handicap the carter and pony races, the carters he did at the starting post, but said he drew the line at horses. 14 Carters in 3 heats ran once round the course, some of them having to lie down afterwards, and the six finalists did it again, with P. Greenhalgh of Burnley winning the first prize of a marble clock, worth £1 10s.
Orlando Whipp of Todmorden, who we first met in 1885, again triumphed in the obstacle race, with G. Dawson of Hebden Bridge second.
The one mile pony race caused much hilarity and controversy. The Athletic News reported that, as the handicapper had declined to get involved, “the equine celebrities were placed on marks the same as the runners. The result was that the gee gee who started from the limit mark won by something like half a mile, amidst the laughter of the spectators.” The winning gee gee was J. Ridehough’s Tommy Rot, and the first prize of £4 was certainly worth having. The Express was appalled at the “wrangle” which followed involving owners, riders and backers, and, on its own high horse, declared “wherever there is horse racing rowdyism naturally follows” and they respectfully suggested that the committee might want to discontinue this event. They said a lot of money had changed hands and those who backed the favourite lost out.
Burnley Borough Band played during the afternoon and for a gala in the evening. So a successful day ended with laughter and dancing.
Although he and his family now lived in this mansion, Sezincote, Stow on the Wold, Tertius Dugdale, owner of Dugdales’ Mill, retained a good relationship with Lowerhouse and his workers, and was generous in helping them celebrate the royal Jubilee. On Monday, he was giving 100 old folks’ a tea party. On Tuesday, he, and the Drews Print Works, had given their workers the day off, and he was giving Sunday School children a field day, with music, coffee, buns, swing-boats, a greasy pole and shooting galleries. A beacon would be lit on Pendle which the Drews had helped pay for. So the locals could go home happy, thinking “God is in His heaven, the Queen Empress is on the Throne and all’s well with the World.” But then, on Thursday, all that changed, see the next part of our 1887 report.
ac November 2026 credit to “Lowerhouse and the Dugdales” by Brian Hall available from Burnley Historical Society, quotes from contemporary press reports sourced via British Newspaper Archive.