Victorian
When the Association of Cricket Statisticians turned to the 1881 census, they uncovered a remarkable picture of how deeply the game of cricket was woven into working life around Leigh. Across Kent, 250 people told the census enumerators that cricket was how they earned their bread. Perhaps most striking of all, half of that number lived in just three places: Leigh itself, Tonbridge, and Chiddingstone Causeway. Within Leigh alone, thirty residents depended on the sport for their livelihood.
For the great majority of these workers, cricket meant manufacturing rather than playing. Cricket ball making was by far the most common trade, with 206 people giving it as their occupation, while 17 made bats. The Dukes factory stood at the Causeway, and it was there that the firm's founder, then 77 years old, could still be found employing seventy-two men and a single boy. Competition came from five or six smaller works scattered through Hildenborough and Tonbridge. Two individuals even described themselves as managers of cricket greens, a reminder that grounds needed looking after too.
The trade clearly ran in families. The Eade family contributed nine members to the industry, the Hitchcocks ten, and the Ingrams five. Smaller dynasties included the Cards with four, the Killicks with three, and both the Batchelors and the Marchants with two apiece. The Simmonds household made its home at Oak Cottage on the Green. Among the individual tradesmen was James Payne of Chiddingstone, who combined ball making with serving as an organist.
Organists and cricket balls came together again in living memory through Ed "Ginger" Meade, another maker of balls who also played the organ — though his repertoire leaned towards jazz rather than hymns. He held the post of organist at Penshurst Church and died only a few years before 2003.
The census also reveals how young the workforce was. Apprentices as young as 14 appear in the records, and one boy from Tonbridge, just 13, was already recorded as a fully qualified ball maker. Charlie Fox of Leigh was another 14-year-old employed in the trade. This should not surprise us: most children of the period left school at 10 or 11. At the other end of the scale, the industry's veterans were few — only nine of the 250 were past sixty, and just fourteen were in their fifties.
Alongside the makers, eighteen people counted themselves as current or former professional cricketers. The oldest was Richard Mills of Rolvenden, who at 83 described himself as a retired farmer and celebrated cricketer. Only one professional was actually living locally: George Wells, whose address was in Tonbridge High Street. Leigh's own best-known player was Ike Ingram, aged 25 at the time of the census, who made balls alongside his father Isaac and turned professional for a couple of seasons around 1878.
Women appear in the records too. Elizabeth Martin, 63, of 32 London Road in Tonbridge, and Mary Young, 67, who had been born in Godstone but was living in Leigh, were both listed as cricket ball makers.