Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 on August 22, 2026| Leave a Comment »
In re-reading the post Our Clash of Future Champions, which can be found: here. I noticed that in Part 4 -The dimly lit view of our past, I argued that chess clubs were widespread accross Bedfordshire in the early 20th century. I do believe I have found the building where one of them met and played.
The Shelter is a reading room and can be seen below.
More information about the building can be found here: The Shelter
M J M
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 on October 10, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Dear fellow chess players and enthusiasts from Bedfordshire, courtesy of his sustained efforts on his truly excellent website Britbase, archivist John Saunders has done what no one else has online and provided us with games from a reported former county champion of Bedfordshire. This means W. B. Dixon, formerly of Leighton Buzzard, becomes the first reported county champion who we have games for and can thus establish his chess playing prowess to some degree, and his successes further afield also.1
Who exactly was W. B. Dixon? I have twice posted about him,2 although I must say the evidence is rather depressing as he was indeed peripatetic but do click on the links in the footnote.
The exact page you need on John’s excellent site is already linked about but here it is again- Britbase. May I suggest you scroll down before you look at the games provided? Should you do so, you will note that W. B. Dixon not only did exceptionally well in the tournament he played in in Kent but also beat American champion H. N. Pilsbury in a simul. That game can be found as number 19.
N.B. Establishing exactly when the Bedfordshire County Championships began and who the first champion was is problematic as its inception has been left undocumented. There is a list of former county champions on Adrian Elwin‘s site, which can be found here –Former County Champions, however, this only begins in 1926/7. The local reportage in a previous post cites W. B. Dixon as county champion in 1906 and describes him as ‘the champion’, from which we must assume he was the current champion otherwise they would have described him as a former champion one would expect. How he also became champion of Buckinghamshire -I have no material pertaining to that. Until further evidence is uncovered, we can only state that W. B. Dixon is the first to be reported as county champion. We have no evidence that former multiple champion of London and participant in the Anglo-American cable matches as well as runner-up of the 1908 British Championships William Ward, was ever Bedfordshire County Champion.
In reaching out for further assistance on the English Chess Forum, further info on W. B. Dixon was provided by the knowledgeable contributor Jon D’ Souza-Eva
Pictures of his grave from the links above are shown below.
M J M
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 on May 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »
This individual is hard to track down. I first encountered him in the 1908 British Chess Magazine, and referred to him in the following post towards the end of it. Our clash of future champions
In the 1933 publication Chess in Bedfordshire he can be found playing board 1 for the county (as the link above shows) but here we learn that his achievements went beyond that. It would appear that he was an eminent member of the Bedfordshire chess scene of his day, although I must add one not often mentioned or written about. This may be due to him being from Leighton Buzzard and not Luton or Bedford.
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 on May 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Sincere apologies for not being methodical and explaining who F. Dickens is. I’ve lost count of the number of posts that he appears in on this site, so please do scroll through the History of Bedfordshire Chess section or just search for his name in the search bar. I can’t link all posts here, I would be swamped. Exploration is better than picking up on some synopsis.
Anyway, here is reportage of him performing a simul, showing his favourite game to his audience and boasting about his win over the world champion E. Lasker (understandable as I too would boast if I had beaten the world champion!). Okay, perhaps he didn’t boast and was just proud of himself, how can we tell….oh it says he was ‘modest’, doesn’t it?
We may wish to reflect upon Mr. F. Dickens’s, the schoolmaster from Kensworth, favourite game and what can be gleaned from it. Establishing how popular that game in particular was in his day is rather tricky but it is safe to say it was indeed well publicized and thus well known, as it is today. We could argue it was already dated back then and question how up to date he was with chess events but let’s not go there…perhaps its better to ask how well read was he? Since I cannot criticize anyone who has played chess for Luton in the past, let’s leave it there!
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 on May 4, 2024| Leave a Comment »
History can teach us a great deal if we are willing to pay attention and take note. In this post we shall see how our Bedfordshire predecessors had a broader understanding of what an evening of board games should entail than one based on just turning up and playing chess, which has long since become the accepted norm.
In a previous post this week, (https://mccreadyandchess.com/2024/05/02/w-ward-plays-for-luton/) I showed how the industrial revolution to some degree shaped chess in Bedfordshire since matches between towns and cities connected by the newly developed national rail service became prominent and were more frequently reported on. We saw how Luton challenged Watford to a match held in St. Albans, a city reachable by train from both Luton and Watford, what with the train being a preferable option over horse and cart. Luton and Bedford also played each other with regularity, being connected by train since the 1860s.
I have uncovered reportage which suggests our board game lovers from the past had a better time of things than what we do in modern times or at least a more wholesome experience. It should be noted that both clubs were classified as Liberal clubs but this should not be mistaken for political persuasion amongst of county fellows. Instead it most likely indicates that superior venues with better facilities were chosen over, say draughty church halls by we chess players wanting a game somewhere. In Bedfordshire during the 20th century there was a shift away from clubs with political affiliations towards working men’s clubs. And although working men’s clubs tended to signify a membership of employees from the designated company, that did not hold true for all members, and similarly, membership at clubs supporting political parties did not necessarily denote political persuasion but rather a liking for clubs with better facilities, frequented by friends and family most likely.
The reportage comes from The Bedford Record and is, of course, pre WW1 -something poet Philip Larkin has something to say about. A games night of billiards—-draughts—-chess. That’s got to be better than turning up just to play chess, surely? If not better than more wholesome. Just imagine it, a few pints as well, conversation and conviviality by the bar too, more games, more fun – a real night of it!
But what do we do if it dawns on us that they knew better in a bygone era? What then? Alternatively you could tell me to shut up!
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;
And the countryside not caring:
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat’s restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word – the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 on May 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 on March 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Past his prime, but not by much in terms of his results, Mr. William Ward (previously of Luton) has had his 1911 City of London Championship success, his sixth at that club, documented on the glorious website Britbase, you can find the exact page here1. For those of you who do not know who he was, please look to the right of my site, click on Category History of Bedfordshire Chess on my site (see below: highlighted option).
MJM
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920, tagged chess, William Ward on February 15, 2016| 1 Comment »
The only game I have where Luton’s William Ward annotates his own play is the following from the 1908 Anglo – American cable match.
Here is the game if you don’t like descriptive notation.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1565643
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920, Quaint Chess History on January 31, 2016| 1 Comment »
Here is an account from the British Chess Magazine. The games provided are William Ward’s.
A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
Not perhaps, but quintessentially, Old Tom Sweby is best thought of as a passionate devotee to the newspapers he wrote for. He was well read and knowledgeable of the Bedfordshire chess scene and well beyond, given that he was the president of the S.C.C.U. once upon a time. He was generally well-respected and rubbed shoulders with many, if not all, of those eminent within British chess circles. It would, however, be a critical mistake to see his column is primary source material entirely. That it is not. You will also find secondary source material quoted too, and the reliability of that is not quite as Tom hoped. Given that he wrote for decades, this is to some degree inevitable, and after all we are all prone to error whether we realize it or not. Thankfully, with regards to old Tom Sweby, they are infrequent and for the most part old Tom continued to document events and developments in the Bedfordshire league from the get go as best he could but, of course, everything lies open to interpretation. Despite this, and generally speaking. this does indeed make him informative and thus worth reading. Dare I say his columns constitute a narrative describing the latest developments, match reports and changing nature of the Beds league...he knew his audience and wrote according. This manifested itself over decades but brevity was always in play courtesy of the restictions imposed by writing a column. Should you wish to read a in instrumental figure of the Beds' league post WW2, you are quite welcome to peruse what has been posted here... . :-) I should, however, point out that as the decades wore on he gradually moved on away from narratives concerning the Bedfordshire league towards affairs both historical and international. The reasons for this are multifarous, old age was a predominante factor presumably, however, the bottom line is with regards to how the Bedfordshire chess scene developed post WW2: old Tom Sweby is your go to guy. He wrote more about chess in Bedforshire than anyone else did but given he was a Lutonian and writing for a Luton newspaper there is both bias and greater coverage of his hometown than the rest of the county.
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