THE DIRECTORS of John Wisden & Co. made a rare trek to the suburbs on Dec 5, 1938, to meet at the spartan Fitzgerald Works (did they have trouble distinguishing between Barnes and Mortlake, and in finding the property they had recorded as being at No. 28 rather than between Nos 14 and 16?). It was agreed to seek an extension of the bank overdraft, but despite gloom expressed about the tennis-ball market (increasingly dominated by Slazenger and Dunlop), turnover was reported up.

There was good business understanding of the international situation (it was 10 weeks after Neville Chamberlain's Munich agreement with Hitler), and its opportunities: the company had been asked by the War Office to tender for `6000 handles for bomb-boxes'. These would be made of steel-wire cable with a leather cover, and the good news was that the factories held adequate waste leather for such an order (presumably offcuts from cricket balls, footballs, boxing-gloves and a range of other sports gear).

H. A. Tipper, one of the new senior staff, was `doing everything within his power, already with success, to get on to the best of terms with the War Office authorities, as it was clear that in the event of the normal trade of the company diminishing owing to war or economic difficulties, it would be greatly to the advantage of the company if it could look to the War Office for orders'.

Mr. Tipper was rewarded (with two management colleagues) by being appointed a director – at no extra fee beyond salary.

Sadly, on Jan 10, 1939 – again at the works – directors were told that the War Office had not issued the order for the bomb-box handles; `but the company had submitted a tender as a result of which a promise has been made by the War Office that the company should receive the next order to be placed for such handles'.

All seemed set fair: turnover was around the figure forecast to allow the company at least to break even; the company was now `running normally on oiled wheels'; there had been no capital expenditure for six months; the write-down of stock at Mortlake would not exceed £100 – and stock at Mortlake and Penshurst was `entirely fresh and satisfactory'.

Director R. J. Clough said the cash position was satisfactory and it gave him `no anxiety'.

Just 20 days later, a special board meeting was called `to consider the serious cash position which had arisen'!

Clough said the position had changed vitally in the last fortnight `owing to suppliers restricting the length of credit allowed, whereas it was found impossible to obtain more prompt credit for debtors'. Firms previously offering five months' credit now gave two months' only: creditors were owed £15,000 while the company could expect no more than £11000 from its debtors.

On Feb 6, 1939, chairman A. E. Tilley went to the head office of Westminster Bank to advise that they could not continue. The bank appointed accountant P. J. Chaplin, FCA, of Singleton Fabian & Co. as receiver and manager, to carry on the business.

The company battled on through the war. On July 8, 1943, Chaplin was named chairman and managing director, expressing the hope that `the company would now go forward with enhanced prosperity'.

Four months later, the minutes give a glimpse of the company's war work: `certain aeroplane sub-sections' were likely to be built at Penshurst: on Jan 6, 1944, Mr Tipper reported discussions with Mr Welsford (presumably of the War Office) on a proposal to manufacture jettison fuel-tanks, but labour could not be found.

Meanwhile the poor old cricket-ball makers, still turning out sports gear for the forces, were battling once again about pay: they were given a 7½% extra bonus on the 1919 rates, to end when peace came.

On March 2, it was reported that a contract to build stretchers did not eventuate. But a further contract for camouflage netting had been received (a logical product for a firm making netting for practice cricket pitches, soccer goals, and tennis and badminton nets).

It was at this board meeting – at Penshurst – that the chairman reported baldly: `The factory at Mortlake had been destroyed by enemy action on the night of Feb 18/19, and Henry Butcher & Co. have been instructed to lodge the claim for loss of plant and machinery with the War Damages Commission. Temporary alternative accommodation in the district was being negotiated for, and arrangements for a temporary (bowls) testing table or floor were being made.'

The beloved King George VI: was sent a leatherbound Wisden

It was decided that Mr Rolph – no doubt of the Taylor-Rolph bowls division – be asked to visit Mortlake `in order that his advice on the new testing table and other technical points could be obtained'.

In 1944 the Co-operative Wholesale Society acquired John Wisden & Co. Ltd, rebuilt by Chaplin's efforts to the point that it was a viable property, even with the war continuing. By Oct 17, 1945, two months after the war's end, a dividend of 6?% was approved, 10 years since the company had last done well enough to pay out. And by Oct 16, 1947, the world of Wisden had returned to such normality that directors could receive `with satisfaction' a letter of thanks from the private secretary to King George VI for the leatherbound volume of Wisden just delivered. (The next editions were sent – again in leather – to both the King and his brother, the Duke of Gloucester: where are these treasures today?)

There is very little other detail available of Wisden's wartime activities: 1939 brought tight emergency controls on production of sportsgoods except for armed forces recreation. Wisden notes that only cricket bats and balls, and footballs, could be made on anything like the old scale, large shipments being sent to every war theatre where servicemen could enjoy sport. Squash and badminton became especially popular at RAF stations where these sports were possible in hangars, but tennis and bowls manufacture stopped.

Veteran craftsmen carried on as younger men were called up, and many sports factories switched largely to munition production or other war output.

There is no information apparently available on the life of Fitzgerald Works during the war, and precious little as to its end, as the company minutes underline. The Borough of Barnes had enjoyed six weeks without bombing until at 1.16 on the morning of Feb 19, 1944, bombs fell on The Willoughbys – two large houses in Upper Richmond Road (now the site of flats of the same name), one occupied by Barnes Council's treasurer's offices, and across White Hart Lane and Fitzgerald Avenue. Eight people died and 45 were injured in the second incident, the only bombs to fall in the borough that night, but the start of a series of raids which included 11 separate blasts the following night.

The near-anonymous part played by John Wisden at Mortlake is emphasised by the mere passing reference – with no name – in an account of the Blitz 1940–1944 recorded by a 1990 newsletter of the Barnes and Mortlake History Society. Local historian Leslie Freeman refers simply to the air-raid damage as being `houses destroyed and eight people killed, and one of the small local factories burned down'. (This same year, 1944, saw the destruction also of the Twort cricket-ball factory in Southborough, Kent, when a V2 rocket hit it.)

The brief company history, A Wisden Century, written by John Hadfield in 1950 to mark the centenary, records: `The Fitzgerald Works were entirely destroyed, with heavy loss of life. Only three or four firewatchers, who were sheltering in the central control room, were miraculously rescued alive from the ruins.'

This implies a workforce on night shift, presumably making equipment for the armed forces. It is believed the actual Wisden sportsgoods works may have been disused at this stage, with the Taylor-Rolph bowls section still in use.

Richmond Register Office lists those bomb deaths as all women, with no occupations given: were they part-time staff, or was there no works death toll at all?

Barnes Council minutes are tightlipped about the raid: there were restrictions on published information which might tell the Germans what impact their attacks were having, or which could affect civilian morale.

It was not until 1960 that the Council decided to build flats on the Priest's Bridge frontage, taking in the area of the abandoned works. And it was only in 1969 that Brook Court went up – a four-storey block of a dozen flats, with garages behind on the old Fitzgerald Works site.

So Fitzgerald Avenue and the works site settled down as the old folk moved on, or died, and a new breed moved in. One man who lived there during the war as a schoolboy says the style of the street has changed distinctly. Geoff Dodkin, known on the motorcycle race circuit since the 1950s for his East Sheen workshop, tuning and preparing Velocettes, arrived at No. 27 Fitzgerald Avenue in 1940 from Wandsworth. He remembers nothing of the Fitzgerald Works, which perhaps seems odd – or maybe teenagers, in the excitement of wartime, had more entertaining matters to worry about than a shabby old factory.

He does recall `quite vividly that the aircraft that bombed us was in a dive – it was definitely high explosive and incendiaries (not doodlebugs as some people had suggested – these did not come till later). I was interested and I could hear it. It went into fine pitch, and dived, and dropped a stick across White Hart Lane and the Willoughbys. My uncle and I were going towards the front door – and the door blew in. It's permanently burned into my psyche.'

Why were the family up at that time (1 o'clock in the morning)?

`You developed a fairly fine antenna as to when the bombing became more intense,' Geoff Dodkin commented drily.

He recalls it as part of a fairly heavy raid on London that night: `The boy I went to school with lost an eye: he was across the road, one of the Biggs family. A lump of glass came through from the bombing and cut his eye.

`The whole of our house was rendered U/S, as they say, so we and quite a few other people had to find other accommodation. The blast took the top off the house, and the houses opposite were really badly damaged.'

The bomb meant a quick move from Fitzgerald Avenue for the Dodkins and others whose homes were wrecked, but Geoff recalls `a certain indignity to it': `My mother was appalled when the council reckoned they had no transport available, and part of the move had to be done on the council dustcart. This was the final insult – far more important to my mother than the bomb. She was very cross about it. Hitler should have known exactly the way to upset our family, because that was it'.

He went to Mortlake Central School, opposite Watney's sports ground, finding enough interests outside school to ignore the Fitzgerald Works, although inquiring youngsters might have been expected to peer through gates or scale fences to discover everything in the neighbourhood.

David Catford, a businessman now living in Derby Road, a lifelong Sheen resident born in Grosvenor Avenue (two streets west of Fitzgerald Road), and during the war a schoolboy at Palewell Park, made a special visit to the devastated Wisden factory on the morning of Feb 20, 1994.

`The scene was of terrible destruction, and the factory was still burning, and the interior totally gutted,' he writes. `It was not possible to enter White Hart Lane, which was cordoned off following the destruction of houses there. According to my diary notes made at the time, the sirens had sounded at 12.40 am and shortly afterwards aircraft were heard to fly in low amidst a terrific barrage from the anti-aircraft guns in Richmond Park. Red flares were seen floating down, followed by the whistle of falling bombs, and explosions shook the house.

`From an upstairs window, I could see a huge blaze with billowing black smoke. Our local church (All Saints in Park Avenue) was silhouetted against the bright red glow from a fire, which was later found to be that in Fitzgerald Road. I recorded the name of the company at the time as Roberts Maclean Ltd, which may well have been the company that occupied the premises vacated by Wisdens.

`In a raid the following day (Feb 20), Watney's Brewery was hit by incendiary bombs, and Omes Works in Beverley Road was wrecked by high-explosive bombs,' Mr Catford sums up.

Maurice Mousley, son of Frank Mousley of the Priest's Bridge garage and tennis interests, at 93 still has sharp memories of the bombing. He recalls looking out of his front door in Grosvenor Avenue, three streets from Fitzgerald Avenue, and seeing the flames. `I was afraid it was the garage. I went up there as soon as I felt it was safe. Wisden was all flaming – I certainly didn't stop off there. I was lucky to get through, but it was safe once the bombers had gone. I paddled through the broken glass of my premises, where there was some damage.'

Fortunately petrol tanks at the garage were intact, or there could have been major fire devastation in the area.

A wartime order to Wisden's publishing office in central London

The Wisden works were of more personal significance to a local teenager of another generation: Harry Washington needed a job in 1931. Speaking at his home in Rutland Close, off Kingsway, he recalled: `I went to Wisden with my mate, old Bill Lloyd. I was 14½ or 15 – I'm 76 now, so it's about 62 years ago. Somebody said, go down to Wisden's, they want some boys – one van boy, and one for sweeping.

`I live in Sheen Lane, No. 18 – it's a garage now, or is it Croxton's? Bill Lloyd lived down West Road; it's been pulled down. We went down and got the job. I think I got paid about threepence-ha'penny an hour (a typical male industrial wage in 1931 was around £3 a week). Up the wooden stairs on a kind of wooden floor they used to do all the stringing of the tennis bats (one side was two-storey). This side you had the machines. The women would polish the racquets, and put transfers on with Wisden, the brand name.

`On the other side you had the Royal coat of arms (shown a Royal Warrant used by Wisden, Harry Washington confirmed this was the crest). That's it. We used to nick a couple of them and put them on the front of our bikes, all nice and posh'.

Harry Washington, riding around Mortlake with the posh Royal coat of arms on his pushbike, had to handle a lowly series of jobs at work: `The racquets used to go down to the women. It was my job. I couldn't go on the machine because I didn't know anything about them. They used to give me a Flit-gun, fill it full of Flit, and I'd go round making fresh air. When I'd come down to the women's section I'd see all their shoes there so I'd squirt it in their shoes. When they got hold of me they'd give me a bleedin' good hiding!'

It was a bit rough, says Harry Washington reminiscently: `Downstairs, they were making tennis balls and cricket balls. Yes, they did make cricket balls. When they used to get out of shape they would put them in the bin, and I could take home a nice ball but with a bump in it, or the leather split.

`They would put the good balls in boxes, and then the van – just an old Ford van – would come down the little alleyway, on the gravel. There was no big gate. It was open, and you went straight in. There were fences on either side of the houses, then the entrance. On the left was Taylor-Rolph, where they made the bowls, and through the gate the rest of it was Wisden. This side was a big window where a bloke used to do all the packing.

`They used to deliver a lot of stuff to Spaldings along the Upper Richmond Road (records suggest this was actually at Putney Bridge Road), tennis balls and so on. Both were real old buildings. The upstairs was held up by girders. Under the girders they used to put all the sacks and sacks of shavings. No, there were no fire precautions. When you threw a dog-end out, if it went under the sacks there'd be a big scramble to get it out. In the bottom of the building was this big open space and all the cricket bat willows were cut and stacked, eight or nine going this way, and that way, and they went up and up. They stacked them all the way down, rows and rows. There would be hundreds. They would stay out there in all the weathers, and then they would bring them in and start again on a machine, cutting them down and cutting the splices in.

`How many people worked there? There were men, women and boys working together. In our shop – one, two, three men in a little cubicle with a pot of glue on the gas-burner, and they would be painting the three-ply and snapping the sandpaper discs on, and the rubber discs, and then they would stick the cork on the table-tennis bats, for the handle.

`Then you went upstairs and there were stringers – about seven up there. Downstairs you had six or seven girls – all youngsters apart from the foreman. His old man worked there in a little cubby-place; he was the repair man if things broke down. A bloke down the other end had his long lengths of cane. The ballmakers were down the other end where the office was, with the big window. We didn't go in there. He was too miserable, he was.

`They had an inspector looking at everything, and they would sling everything in a big chest, a bin. You'd go in there and say, have you got any firewood, Guv? And they'd say yes, in the bin. And you'd look in there and say, look at these. There'd be tennis racquets twisted out of shape – say the wood was a bit green or they made the strings too tight. They would be all bent and thrown out straightway.

`No, you didn't get given any bats. They were perfect.

`In the bowls, I said to this bloke, got any firewood? He said, go in Taylor-Rolph, and this little old boy there – miserable bloke – he said, yeah, got your sack? I said yeah. There was wood on the end of the bench, so he got this little circular saw whizzing round and this little crane lifting these logs up and he'd got it all marked out, so it just went whiz and he cut the corners off.

`Here you are, he said. I put them in the sack, and he said, that's it. And I said, what do mean, that's it? I've only got a little bit in the bottom. So he said, well, try to lift it. And I couldn't bleedin' lift it. It was lignum vitae.'

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