Sir Ughtred’s Prize
Jill found this mysterious object about 40 years ago, probably when out geocaching, and after giving it a recent dust, she resolved to finally find out more about it, and to find it a new home.
It is a slightly convex metal plate, with four sides each measuring about 4.5 cm long, and when found was still attached to the last few shreds of a cricket ball. The inscription reads:
Presented by Sir U.J. K Shuttleworth BART to F. Price. Scoring 67 runs Gawthorpe v Lowerhouse August 1st. 1885.
So almost exactly 140 years later, in early September, 2025, Jill, of Greater Manchester, contacted us. We explained that the donor was Sir Ughtred Kay Shuttleworth (BART=Baronet), of Gawthorpe Hall, now a National Trust property.
Sir Ughtred Kay Shuttleworth, image Public Domain
We offered to investigate and also to contact the Hall on her behalf. They proved keen to add the plate to their collection of family items and promised to contact Jill to arrange this, so we are very hopeful that the plate will, in fact, return home to Gawthorpe Hall.
The Burnley Express on August 8th, 1885 told us a little more:
“Cricket at Gawthorpe – An interesting match was played on Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth’s private ground at Gawthorpe on Saturday afternoon, between the ground eleven and an eleven representing Lowerhouse. The ground team proved victorious, scoring 138 against 117.”
Whenever Sir Ughtred wanted to hold a match on his cricket field behind the Hall, he would assemble a “Gawthorpe” team and invite a local eleven to play them. He played himself, without distinction, but made sure his team included some decent local players. The following week his team included Richard Boys, the very well known Burnley CC captain, who in later years was mainly remembered for the tragic nature of his death. On January 4th 1896, a dilapidated mill chimney fell on his sportswear and hat shop on the corner of St. James’s Street and Calder Street killing him and his wife, Rebecca, and Margaret McCluskey, a young customer in the adjacent cloggers. This property was demolished and rebuilt only to be recently destroyed again by fire, fortunately with no loss of life.
We would like to think that the Lowerhouse Eleven were provided by the cricket club, Sir Ughtred being one of our patrons, but we can’t say for sure. The same newspaper reported on Lowerhouse losing to Burnley away the same day, so if it was a cricket club XI, they weren’t the first team.
But who was F. Price the star cricketer who scored most of his side’s runs?
P.C. Price of Padiham
Fred Price was in fact a local Bobby in Padiham, but although he came from a textile manufacturing area, it was not weaving but knitting. He was born in 1857 in Ruddington, and brought up in Costock, on the borders of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, near Loughborough, the centre of the huge hosiery knitting industry, with men working on frames, usually rented, knitting stockings, shawls, underwear etc. in cottages or small workshops. Fred’s father and grandfather were Framework Knitters, a trade so common in that area that it was often abbreviated to FWK and in the 1871 census, aged about 14, Fred too was a FWK. The whole family would have had to help in the various stages of production. Fred’s father was said to be a knitter of cotton and merino.
It was hard physical work, the heavy wooden frame was operated by foot pedals, they worked long hours, in poor light, at the mercy of middlemen who brought the raw materials and placed the work, it was poorly paid, and, without any collective bargaining structure, they were virtually powerless.
Image Barrow upon Soar Heritage Group
Framework knitters loved their cricket
However, there was one benefit to being a home worker, “He could organise his work to suit himself and his pastimes. No doubt as a means of removing themselves from their everyday grind many framework knitters enjoyed a game of cricket. Several went on to become county players;”one such was Walter Price from Ruddington, so quite possibly part of Fred’s extended family, who had a long and distinguished career for Nottinghamshire and the MCC amongst others, and whose son William was one of the two pros at East Lancs in 1892 and 3. When Fred was growing up, Nottingham was the powerhouse of cricket in England. (source Framework Knitters by Dr. Denise Amos, The Nottinghamshire Heritage Gateway.)
Fred was really good at cricket and started playing as a boy, turning out for the Costock village team, and probably other teams too. In August 1873, about 15 years old, playing in a two innings game for Costock against rival village team Gotham Cuckoo CC, in the first innings he took six wickets, three clean bowled, one was “thrown out” by him, another caught and bowled and one hwb (hit wicket?). In the second innings he took another clean bowled and another caught and bowled. In later life he claimed that at 19 years old, in his best season ever, he had taken 80 wickets, at an average of 3 runs per wicket, and hat-tricks on three consecutive days.
A Big Decision
In 1877 Fred married Sarah Jane Emery and they soon had their first baby, John William. Looking at how he would support his family, he knew what a hard life lay in store for him as a Framework Knitter, he may also have understood that inevitably the knitting process would be mechanised and the cottage knitting industry was doomed. Other options locally were few, and he took the bold decision to leave all their family behind and to join the Police, for which he was ideally suited, smart, young, strong, a sober married man, and a cricketer, Police Forces always had cricket teams. But why the Lancashire Constabulary? It might simply have been that Lancashire needed men. 1878 was a desperate time in the cotton towns. Between April and June the weavers were on strike, or locked out, in a bitter dispute about proposed wage cuts, which also put ancillary trades out of work. There was much hardship and in May there was some unrest, usually described as riots. Police resources were stretched with local magistrates (like Sir Ughtred), often keen to bring in soldiers to enforce law and order. Read more here about what it was like for Lowerhouse mill village and cricket club. In the Bolton Ev. News, May 20 1878, it was reported that “There were in the county 1200 constables, of whom 610 had been drafted to the disturbed area, leaving 550 for the protection of the remaining part of the county and remembering that the county constabulary had to guard such places as Bootle, St. Helens, Bury and other large centres of population.”
And when Fred joined the Lancashire Force, he started at the aforementioned Bootle where the Prices spent a couple of years and where their second child, Florence was born. They were then in Little Marsden (Nelson) for a year or so, before arriving in Padiham around 1882 for a settled period of some 12 years, during which time they had another five children, Arthur b 1882, Ada, b. 1885, James 1887, Martha, 1890 and Gertie, 1892.
Fred soon became very involved with Padiham Cricket Club, and also turned out regularly for County Police teams. In those pre-Lancashire or Ribblesdale League days Lowerhouse v Padiham was a fierce local derby, and Fred did play at Lowerhouse! He was a useful but average performer for Padiham with bat but mostly ball, but was the star of the Police team, although that may not have been saying much. In a game at Brierfield Football Ground in 1892 for the County Police against a Brierfield Tradesmens’ Eleven, Fred took 7 for 17, but with only 53 to beat, the Police were all out for 32, Fred himself contributing nil. And along the way he also picked up that nice prize from Sir Ughtred of Gawthorpe Hall.
Farnworth, the final chapter
In 1894 Fred was finally promoted to Sergeant and the family moved first to Hindley for a couple of years, where Fred Junior was born in 1894 and then, ultimately, to Farnworth, where their last child Annie, was born in 1897.
Fred played for Hindley for a couple of years, on one occasion against Ashton taking 6 for 9, whereupon the Wigan Examiner of 11 May 1894 described him as a bowler of no mean merit. Then in 1896/7 after one season with Farnworth Social Circle he found his spiritual home at Farnworth Cricket and Bowling Club.
The Farnworth Chronicle of 17 August 1907 reported that Farnworth CC held a special meeting to celebrate his 50th birthday. He was praised not only for having been a mainstay of the cricketing side of the club for nearly 12 seasons, but also for being a very active club secretary, collector and general stalwart. Fred was presented with a silver tea urn, and a photo of him in bowling action was hung in the pavilion. He told the gathering how much he had always loved cricket and being around cricket clubs, particularly this one, and that he would carry on playing as long as he could. The same report confirmed that Fred had obtained a donation and loan from the club President, to be used to further the club’s bold plan to create a new cricket ground at Bridgeman Park. 12 months later, tremendous efforts by the members, overseen by their secretary Fred, saw this dream realised.
Sarah Jane, his wife of a quarter of a century, died in 1903 aged 47, having given birth to nine children. In 1905 Fred married Jane Brookes of Farnworth. He probably took his Police pension, around 1903 after 25 years’ service, retiring as a Detective Sergeant. He became an insurance agent, and a shopkeeper, before, probably in 1915, being appointed bowling green/park keeper for the Council at Ellesmere Recreation Ground. He was also an active member of the local Liberal Party, serving a term as a councillor. He retired from the Parks Department in 1927 due to ill health, and died on 12th January 1936 in Farnworth aged 78.
At this point we had exhausted on-line resources without finding a photo of Fred. An appeal on Farnworth social media resulted in a very kind chap called Steven going to the Library and checking the non-digitised Farnworth Journal. He found a tribute to Fred on his retirement from the Parks Department, saying how popular he had been with the men who used the bowling green. During coal strikes in 1921 and 1926 he organised bowls handicaps to give them something to do. The quality of his green keeping had led to an increase in bowlers. An obituary paid a similar tribute. Both these reports had the same photo of him, although we only have this blurry copy taken from the screen. We hope a better one will still turn up, preferably the one from his 50th birthday which was hung in the then pavilion of Farnworth Cricket and Bowling Club.
Probably forgotten except by his family, Fred Price was a typical example of those generations of dedicated ordinary workers who ensured the survival of “little” community cricket clubs like Farnworth and Lowerhouse. And we only know about him because of the amazing coincidence of Jill finding, and keeping, that little inscribed plaque with its links to Lowerhouse and Gawthorpe.
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