When was the north/south divide removed from league chess, enabling a change of name and our league becoming the Bedfordshire Chess League? See below.
They were accepted, in 1952 it became The Bedfordshire Chess League. See below.
Mark. J. McCready
Archive for the ‘History of Bedfordshire Chess’ Category
Defining moment
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on February 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Local & national
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess, tagged bedfordshire on December 16, 2024| 1 Comment »
We have Dennis Victor Mardle. Born and raised in Luton, a varsities champion who represented his country once in a match against Holland. Rarely out of England’s top ten players in the 50s.
We also have Michael McDonald-Ross, the man who Bedfordshire’s strongest player ever homegrown talent GM James Plaskett said was his toughest opponent ever in the Beds league in the 70s.
It’s 1965, the British Championship, and generations apart, they met over the board. The game itself was a draw and sadly uneventful, as the Sicilian Kan often is. Why is this game significant? It’s the first time two noted players from the Bedfordshire league met at the British Championship. They were both amongst the strongest our league has ever seen and met at the British championship in 65. I have no records of two eminent figures in Bedfordshire chess history doing so before them. If presenting Bedfordshire chess at a national level is important, this was the first recorded instance.
I did speak to Michael McDonald Ross about this and he does still remember the game. Fyi in terms of rating they were both about 2200-2300. Anyway, here’s the game, forwarded to me by Mr. Paul Habershon, he who continues to offer help and support when he can always.
https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=2064348
MJM
Chat with Peter Gayson
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on December 8, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows;
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.A. E. Housman, A Shropshire lad
80’s Luton board 1 player Peter Gayson talks bout pitting his wits against the toughest.
MJM
An ending it seems…
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 29, 2024| Leave a Comment »
After all the years of service he gave them, that is what they said. But Tom lives on through me, many others, and wont be forgetten -I have seen to that for he now has new readers who may take inspiration from him.
Why Bedfordshire chess has been read both within and beyond our borders…
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess, Life beyond the chess board, Personal Interest & Experience on November 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Viewing history as a literary artefact is not a debillitating nor less a terminal complaint. Rather, recognizing the importance of narrative explanation in our lives as well as the study of the past could liberate historians as we acknowledge and try to narrate the disruptive discontinuity and chaos of the past and in the present. The desire is, in itself, a product of our own age’s preoccupation with understanding the nature of our seemingly chaotic lives. History is itself historical -its methods and concepts as well as the debates about its nature are the products of historical time periods. Alan Muslow – Deconstructing History (1997)
Those who put Bedfordshire on the map over the years:
- First, Dickens and White Chess in Bedfordshire (1933)
- Second, G.H. Diggle (1950’s onwards but sporadic)
- Third Walter Bramwell Hirst (1950’s onwards, problems appreared in The British Chess magazine and have been kept by The British problem society)
- Forth, Edward Winter (Chess notes, 90’s onwards)
- Fifth, Adrian Elwin (Archivist 2000 onwards)
- In terms of what has put Bedfordshire on the map. Inexorably, county results in the national county championships can be found in the (what was) BCF yearooks (and is now) the ECF yearbooks, all of which can be found in the British Library, should you consider them of interest…should it remain the case I have not done so and posted them on this site (more than less likely).
With regards to the digital revolution we are, happily, undergoing, a number of blogs have subsequently emerged: (most obviously this ‘un). Also:
https://www.bedfordchess.co.uk/
http://www.leightonbuzzardchess.co.uk /
But who be him that has written about our chess history the most? Moi of course.
Mark. J. McCready, Mandalay, Myanmar
The Luton News and Bedfordshire Chronicle 1988
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 23, 2024| Leave a Comment »
More on Bramwell Hirst from ‘old’ Tom
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »
More on Diggle from ‘old’ Tom
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Fellow Bedfordshire league and county players, the book Chess in Bedfordshire (1933) was the first to gain a nationwide audience for chess in our county. The second author to achieve the same feat was G. H. Diggle, who wrote about his experiences of chess in Bedfordshire some decades later; therefore, he is a significant figure in our history. You will find his articles many times over by searching for him in the search bar, and wikipedia gives a fuller account of his achievements.
The Luton News and Bedfordshire Chronicle 1989
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »
The Luton News and Bedfordshire Chronicle 1990
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess on November 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »
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A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
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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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