JOHN WISDEN died at the Cranbourn Street premises in 1884. His manager, Henry Luff, took control of the business, as Wisden was unmarried and had no family heir. In 1897 the John Wisden company acquired its first factory to make its own branded sports gear. The shop had previously sold material made by others. This was at Tonbridge, a traditional centre of the cricket ball industry, followed just before the First World War by a second works at 52 Richford Road, West Ham.

It was this factory, presumably outgrown and out of date as demand expanded with the spread of sport in the 1920s, which was replaced by leasing buildings in Fitzgerald Avenue from John Rottman in 1955.

John Wisden & Co. Ltd further acquired, in 1920, Duke & Son, whose factory at Penshurst, also in the cricketing county of Kent, was famed for its cricket ball tradition and quality, as well as making top-class bats.

In 1924 the Wisden range was extended by purchase of a controlling interest in Taylor-Rolph, a major manufacturer of lawn bowls, a company founded around the turn of the century when George Taylor designed a master machine to ensure absolute accuracy in building the essential bias into a lawn bowl. The process remained secret for years. One room at Penshurst after the Second World War was still closed to all but a select group of craftsmen who signed the equivalent of the Official Secrets Act, guaranteeing they would not reveal the process.

Penshurst also housed a 42-ft testing table, with a slate bed and green felt cover, like a giant snooker table. Completed bowls were checked on this for bias: an early version was based at Mortlake.

Mortlake concentrated on tennis racquets and hockey sticks as well as cricket bats, but cricket balls came primarily from Tonbridge, made by long-serving craftsmen born and bred in the Kentish cricket craft tradition. Head office was set up at Mortlake, while the West End showrooms moved in 1928 to 15 Great Newport Street, round the corner from Cranbourn Street. A plaque on the wall at No. 15 records the Wisden link.

The touring Australian cricketers of 1905 take time out to visit the Wisden cricket ball factory in Quarry Hill, Tonbridge

The Wisden company minute-books outline the story of the Mortlake years, but with scant attention to the Fitzgerald Works themselves. The West Ham property had been sold for £750, the board meeting at No. 8 Staple Inn was told on Sept 24, 1925, the minutes recording also that employees at Watford were on strike.

Managing director of John Wisden, G. D. Gooch, reported `progress regarding the impending removal to the factory at Barnes'– a reminder of uncertain boundaries around Fitzgerald Avenue and Priest's Bridge (the immediate area was called Barnes for years, changing to Mortlake between the wars).

Confusion extended to the only instance when the minutes actually recorded the full address of the works – getting it wrong. The record for Aug 6, 1937 refers to the factory at No. 28 Fitzgerald Avenue, where a private house stands today, clearly of Victorian origins!

Certainly Mortlake made cricket equipment before Wisden: firms and craftsmen recorded by M. B. Alexander in The Journal of The Cricket Society in 1983–84–89 include, back in 1882, Mark Clapshaw, `batmaker', living at The Green, Mortlake. Two years later, Charles Clapshaw, of similar occupation, was based on Mortlake High Street: five generations of batmaking Clapshaws are listed by Hugh Barty-King in his history of bat and ball-makers Quilt Winders and Pod Shavers, starting with the splendidly named Aquila Clapshaw, who held the Royal Warrant as supplier of cricket bats to Prince Albert, Victoria's Prince Consort.

Alexander also notes S. M. Wainwright as a batmaker based at 15 Soho Square, W1, and Fitzgerald Works, Barnes, as well as in Leeds between 1919 and 1925. Possibly his small outer-London plant was taken over by John Wisden in that year. (But to confuse the issue, Barty-King says the Wainwright bat firm was bought by the freshly-founded Gray-Nicolls Ltd in 1941.)

Wally Hardinge, capped by England at cricket and football, was a sales rep for Wisden – though denied certain provileges

Minutes suggest the John Wisden cricket side ran smoothly enough in the late 1920s, but there was constant concern about tennis, especially ball production, handled by an associated company, The Avon India Rubber Company Ltd, of Melksham, Wilts. (It also produced grips for bats, hockey sticks, racquets etc, plus football bladders.) In 1928, for instance, the directors asked the managing director to make special effort `to increase the sale of tennis balls to Belgain holiday resorts such as Ostend, Zeebrugge, Knocke, etc'.

There is no explanation why this market was significant, but it was important enough for the next meeting to hear Mr Gooch `fully explain the position regarding the supply to the Belgian holiday resorts', and this was `discussed at length'.

The company was doing well. A dividend of 15% was regularly approved, and staff bonuses paid. But there was a marked lack of generosity to sales representative H. T. W. Hardinge, the Kent allrounder, who asked if the company would pay half his expenses to travel to Australia at the same time as Percy Chapman's 1928–29 MCC team. Not only did the board reject his request; it voted that `no leave of absence be granted'. Poor hardinge: a one-Test player and soccer international (he played for Newcastle United, Sheffield United and Arsenal), his services were dispensed with in 1934 when his first-class career ended.

There is an odd entry for the meeting on Feb 18, 1929 that printers and bookbinders Hazell Watson & Viney Ltd had suggested John Wisden & Co. Ltd might be willing to `purchase'Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. As the company owned the Almanack, printed by Balding & Mansell, it seems more likely that the inquiry was whether it might be willing to sell, and the secretary got the record wrong. In any case, it was agreed no proposal be entertained `if this should involve the alteration of the Almanack in any way, or control changing hands', and the matter appears to have died.

Fitzgerald Works receives a rare and mundane mention in the same minutes – the managing director reporting `certain old sheds at Mortlake were in course of being replaced by new ones costing £500'. This was approved.

On May 19, 1930, the managing director was instructed to investigate the possibility of opening a factory in Australia, with special attention to regulations affecting skilled workmen `it would be necessary to send out'. The idea was considered again five months later, but allowed to `stand over'– and suddenly markets were hit by worldwide depression.

Cricket-ball makers went on strike from Dec 24, 1930, forced to resume on March 16 of the following year with a 10% cut in their wages as Wisden, like all companies, felt the cold blast of the economic climate.

One sales gimmick was recorded that January: buyers of the top-range Wisden Exceller Extra Special bats in April and May would be presented with a copy of Wisden`as long as the supply of Almanacks lasts'. Did this have any effect on the scarcity of that 1931 edition?

Perhaps the company should have tried softening up the surveyor of Barnes Urban District Council with a gift Wisden, for the managing director reported at the same meeting that he was `having trouble' with the officer because machinery was being used in sheds erected at Mortlake in 1928, the original licence being for storage only.

`Barnes UDC renewed the licence only to June 30. They will be unable to renew after that date,' Mr Gooch reported gloomily. There is no further reference. Whether the surveyor was persuaded otherwise, the machinery was shifted, or work stopped for a while and then resumed, no one knows.

By Nov 18, 1932 trading difficulties were reported from every country, with `practically no orders being received in Australia, where a big turnover used to be done'. The Australians were manufacturing all their own sporting goods, the directors were told. `Extracts were read from different customers in Australia, pointing out the bad position there as regards imported goods.'

It was to be only a few weeks later that `imported goods' brought in by one Douglas Jardine were to sour Anglo-Australian relations as the Bodyline series exploded.

A relic of Wisden's London days: the surviving wall ceramic in Cranbourn Street, above what used to be his shop. He died there in 1884

There was more bad news: `There is no doubt in India that a large proportion of the population are still adverse (sic) to buying British goods. In Argentina, the rate of exchange is very much against the importing of British goods. On the Continent, it is difficult, with the exception of Holland and Denmark, to sell there owing to the rate of exchange.'

It sounds a familiar British problem – but Norman Lamont could hardly be blamed this time, as he was not to be born for another decade.

Gooch sacked

On May 6, 1937, the managing director said: `the sports trade had been and still was in a very bad way'– and two directors advised that a change of management or liquidation was essential. Chairman A. E. Tilley referred to `disastrous results of trading', and Gooch was allowed 48 hours to consider the request that he resign as managing director. Four days later the embattled managing director refused to quit, so was given three months' notice. F. L. Horabin was appointed as a director for a limited period `to take over and reorganise the management of the business with a view to liquidation'.

He was immediately involved with new ideas, reporting on July 20 a proposal for a `pocket Wisden' at sixpence (the Almanack then cost five shillings in limp cloth and 7/6 in boards) `to compete with the annuals produced by News Chronicle and Athletic News'. (Nothing more was heard of this until after the war, in 1947, when delayed appearance of the Almanack sparked the suggestion of a half-crown `pocket volume' to be produced in April'as a forerunner to, but not in place of, the Almanack'. Again nothing happened.)

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