The Rest Is History - 592. Mad Victorian Sport

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

How and when was football invented, and what are the origins of football clubs? What is the connection between public hangings, highwaymen, and early sporting events? Which is the most historically important sporting ground in the world? When was the first cricket test match played? What are the origins of rugby? Who was Richard Manks - the Lionel Messi of the Victorian period - and what did he achieve? And, what is the history of the mighty Ashes, one of the most celebrated sporting rivalries of all time? Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the surprising history of some of the world’s greatest sports, sporting events, and stadiums. Watch The Long Walk exclusively in cinemas 12th September. Book now at thelongwalkmovie.co.uk Join The Rest Is History Club: Unlock the full experience of the show – with exclusive bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to every series and live show tickets, a members-only newsletter, discounted books from the show, and access to our private Discord chatroom. Sign up directly at therestishistory.com For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett + Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest is History. For weekly bonus episodes, add free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to the restishistory.com and join the club. That is, the rest is history.com. Some years since, the feet of walking 1,000,

Miles in 1,000 hours was considered next to an impossibility. But here, we have to record the Wander doubled. This has been accomplished on the Surrey Cricket Ground, Kennington Oval, by Richard Manx, whose feats of walking present instances of the capability and endurance of the human frame altogether unparalleled. Manx commenced this feat on Friday the 26th of last September, but, being suddenly attacked with diarrhea, he was compelled to give up on the Monday following after having walked 129 miles. His surgeon ordered Manx to rest for a time, to recruit his health and strength. This the pedestrian reluctantly yielded to, and for a fortnight he remained under

medical treatment. On Friday the 10th of October, he recommenced his great task, starting for the first mile at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, on he went, full of spirit, completing his first 100 miles at 43 minutes, 15 seconds after 5 o'clock on Sunday evening the 12th of October, his second 100 miles at 44 minutes, 10 seconds past 7 o'clock on Tuesday the 14th of October, and finally, after completing another 799 miles, going for his thousandth mile at half past 11, 11, o'clock on Friday morning, October the 31st. Manx has been heard to declare that never again will he attempt such a frightful feat. So that was the Illustrated London News, November 1851.

And Tom, it is recording one of the supreme feats in the history of sport, a triumph over adversity, over adverse conditions, over their landscape, and over diarrhea, it's a feat that deserves to live in the legends of sport, but sadly, has been almost completely forgotten. Tragically, it has. And I like to think that the rest of history is nothing, if not a vehicle for resurrecting great sporting feats that have been forgotten. And I think obviously one of the reasons why it's been forgotten is it did happen a very long time ago.

So it happened before the first Olympics of the modern era in Athens, in 1896, before. for the establishment here in England of the Football League in 1888, before the founding of professional baseball in the United States way back in 1869. So, I mean, that's a very good reason why Richard Manx is no longer a household name. But I guess it's also because the sporting field in which he established himself as the goat, the greatest of all time, namely pedestrianism. I mean, it no longer exists. Nobody, you don't see pedestrianism on Sky Sports.

No, no, but people still walk. They do. But they're not doing it as part of a very complicated sporting infrastructure, are they? No, they're not. And in that, it's unlike other sports that were starting to flourish in the early 19th century in Britain. So horse racing, I mean, that's been going on for a long time. Cricket, that dates back to the 17th century. Boxing, again, in very long history. But sadly, pedestrianism hasn't made it into the modern era. So it might in that sense seem a kind of historical artifact. But I think the reason for zooming in on this seemingly obscure topic is that his incredible feat at the Kennington Oval in 1851, even as it reminds us of a sporting world that we have lost, I think it is also anticipating the future. And you can see lots of ways in which it anticipates the future in that report that you read from the Illustrated London News.

So the fact that the report exists at all, right? So we did a story, lots of listeners will remember one of the great episodes we did on history's greatest monkeys. And we covered another sporting fixture, which was the encounter between Jacko McCacco and Puss, the dog in the Westminster Pit. And that was a window into the unknowability of the past because there weren't really reliable newspaper reports of what happened in this great sporting encounter. But here, you know, we have a very detailed report with very, very precise timings. Yes, perhaps overly. size. Yes, exactly. 43 minutes and 15 seconds after 5 o'clock. But the thing is, that's what people love in sport, isn't it? Of course it is. The statistics plus the media, plus the

reportage, that's key to the sporting phenomenon, isn't it? It absolutely is. And also, I think the other thing that points to the future is the way that innovations have been introduced at this great sporting occasion to boost attendance, to get spectators in through the turnstiles. So one of these is reported, not in the Illustrated London News, but in another paper covering this occasion, the morning advertiser. And the journalist writes, a number of variegated lamps have been placed in the most conspicuous parts of the course, and one placed on each of the stakes that hold the ropes that form the ring. And these are set up on the final night where Manx is approaching the finishing line, because so many people want to come and see it. And obviously he's walking through

the night. Yeah. And it's dark. I'm just going to just go on record here. People say there's no such thing as progress in history, but a world in which people would get up in the middle of the night, to watch a man basically walking down the road, is lamented. Absolutely. I mean, it is progress because, to quote the sports journalist Dominic Utton, who's written a fascinating article on this, these lamps made Max's display of pedestrianism on the final night of his great feet at the Oval, the world's first floodlit sporting event. Wow. And all of this contributes to the buzz. Yeah. So by the time that Manx finally gets to cross, the finishing line. The Oval is absolutely full to capacity. All 3,000 seats, 3,000 seats. Incredible.

And there are massive, massive queues outside. All the streets around the Oval are kind of filled to overflowing. It's the talk of London. I can't help thinking that a lot of those people are going to be disappointed. But they're not, though. I mean, that's the thing. The sense of occasion is incredible. And I think that's precisely what makes it such a kind of pivotal moment in the history of sport, that it's midway between the future, a future with floodlight sporting occasions and press coverage and all of that, but also a pass that reaches way, way back into the pre-modern world. And I know you're passionate about this particular sporting venue. So the Oval in itself is a harbinger of what's to come, isn't it? Because it's the ancestor in some ways, it was an ancestor

of the sports stadiums, you know, Villa Park, Molyneux, the great stadiums of football or crickets or American football or baseball or whatever it might be. Yeah. So the Oval had been founded six years earlier in 1845 in Kennington, which is in South London. And it's catering to the southern reaches of London, which by this point is the world's largest city, in the same way that another and even older cricket ground, namely lords, caters to its northern reaches. And these two grounds are physical emblems of sport.

a new kind of entertainment, an industrial form of entertainment, because it is serving an industrial megalopolis. So London is sprawling, it's rich, it's teeming with inhabitants. And these inhabitants, lots of them now, are consumers who have both the time and the money to sit down and watch a man walk around a field, as well as a host of other occasions. So it reflects the development of leisure as much as anything else, and also suburbanism, right? Because these are effectively what would then have been called suburban grounds. Yes. And that's interesting because Kennington is now a suburb of London. It's being absorbed into the kind of the mass of the city. But previously it had been a common, which is a vast expanse of open public land.

That's why it's called a common. Because it was close to London. It had provided Londoners with the kind of place of public recreation. It's where you would go out to breathe fresh air. The recreation you could find there included sports of all kinds. And as London expands and the Common starts to vanish beneath brick, the Oval is founded to ensure that there would be at least some open ground where people could continue to play cricket or as we will see football as well. And in that sense, the Oval is not just looking forward to the future. It is a reminder of the role that Commons had played in providing recreation for people

in England and indeed other countries as well. And these are kind of forms of entertainment that reach back to the medieval past. So there may be some listeners who are sort of thinking, oh gosh, I wish they were doing the war of the Spanish succession or something because sport isn't really history. But of course, sport is history. It's part of the texture of life for millions of people

who were here before us. And this week we've got a guest coming on, haven't we, Robert Coles, who is going to be talking about boxing. And he's written a brilliant book, this sporting life. And he makes the point, doesn't he, that historians, perhaps because they're often quite nerdy people, they tend to neglect sport or to slightly condescend to it when they write about it. They don't treat it with the importance that it deserves as a kind of specimen of social history. You agree with him, don't you? Because

obviously you've written about sport in the Greek and Roman worlds, or chariot racing, I guess, in Constantinople. Yeah, I think that what people do in their leisure time is fascinating. And sport in the modern world is such a huge part of people's lives, but it's also a huge part of the global economy. I mean, it's absolutely become a way for not just individuals anymore, but entire states to project their prestige and their power. So I think the story of how that has emerged is really significant. And so in that spirit, why don't we try and place this great feat of Richard Manx at the Oval in its proper historical context? I'd love that. We can do that first by looking at the history of pedestrianism, this kind of mad-sounding sport, now pretty much

forgotten, but one that was a topic of obsessional interest in the first half of 19th century Britain, you know, it becomes a complete national obsession. And then by looking at the significance of the venue where he does this feat, this incredible achievement of walking a thousand miles in 500 consecutive half hours, so namely the oval, why was it built where it was, and how did it subsequently influence the development of professional sport as we would recognise it today? Sounds brilliant. And I think that answering these questions, I hope, will make the case for the Oval as perhaps one of, if not the most historically significant of all modern sports grounds,

kind of the prototype for so much that follows. Okay, but Stephanie up there with the ground that invented European football, which is modern. So let us start with pedestrianism, though. So you compare it in your notes with boxing and cricket. So a sport that is basically born of the 18th. century obsession with gambling. Yes. So people are betting money on people walking around a track or down the street or whatever,

which seems mad, but we know that the Georgians love to bet. So that's actually pretty plausible. Yeah. And the thing is that it's something that appeals both to the upper classes, to the very highest echelons of society and to the vast mass of people. And actually, foot races, so not people running, but just walking, have been a first feature of kind of fairs and public celebrations since at least the restoration back in the 17th century. Oh, they knew how to have fun. They really did. The merry monarch. Nothing but

fun. But noblemen were bet on these, right? Absolutely. So it's completely part of the climate of aristocratic gambling. So it's not just happening in fairs. It's happening in the kind of gentleman's clubs where you go to give talks about yourself. So in the 18th century, famously this saw kind of aristocrats in their clubs bet on all kinds of mad things so would a pigeon leave a window ledge within a given time

or perhaps the most notorious one there's a bet that one of the gamblers would be able to have sex and I quote in a balloon 1,000 yards from the earth right so these are the kind of things oh dear I've just lost Shropshire that kind of thing because the pigeon has flown off or his lordship hasn't managed to get in the hot air balloon

with a strumpet all of that But they will use their servants, won't they? So basically footmen racing, is that right? They'll race their footmen? Yes. And again, this reaches back to the restoration. So Samuel Peeps, of course, I mean, he loves his pleasures. And so he's a big enthusiast for footman racing.

So on the 30th of July 1663, he reports how the town talk this day is of nothing but the great foot race run this day on banstered downs between Lee, the Duke of Richmond's footman and a tailor, a famous runner. And Lee has beat him, though the king and Duke of York and all. men almost did bet three or four to one upon the tailor's head. So the king, the Duke of York, I mean, it doesn't get higher than that. Wow. And so this is an enthusiasm that runs through the 17th century, through the 18th century, into the Napoleonic Wars. And in the fight against France, the fight against Napoleon, the craze for gambling on foot races starts to merge with something

else that we've talked about a lot in connection, say, with Nelson. And this is a relish for displays of heroic manliness. Right. And people believe that you can prove your manliness by walking. Is that right? Yes, they do. They do. And when you contemplate the feats that are achieved, I mean, you'd see why. So the guy who blazes the path for this emerging sport of pedestrianism in the first decade

of the 19th century is a Scotsman called Robert Barclay Oladice. And he's universally known as Captain Barclay. And he comes from a very old and distinguished Scottish family. He's a descendant, I think, of a cousin of the founder of Barclay's bank. He's a military man, so hence Captain Barclay. He's served with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and he is an archetypal sportsman. So when he's not off serving with His Majesty's army, he is training and supporting boxers and himself engaging in boxing.

But his main claim to fame is his stunning feats of what come to be called pedestrianism. And he seems to kind of have worked up to this. by every so often doing some kind of mad feet. So in 1801, it's a very, very muddy day. Right. And he thinks, oh, mud, brilliant. There's a challenge. And so he walks 110 miles in under 19 and a half hours

along these muddy lanes just to show that he can do it. I'm going to go on record. I don't believe you could guarantee that all 110 miles would be muddy. I think you could talk up the mud, but I believe that parts of that track would be just less muddy. Okay, that's the bracing skepticism for which you are renowned. 1805, I don't know whether you're going to be skeptical about this. He has his breakfast and then he thinks, I'll go for a walk.

He walks 72 miles and then he sits down for dinner. No, I believe that because I'm doing something similar because I'm walking around the Welsh coast, as you know, with my mates, James and Tim from school. And how far have you got with that? A lot of miles. A lot of miles. We started in the top North Wales, which is quite grim, if I'm completely honest. In about 2040, we'll be in the nice bit with all the beaches and stuff. But we're doing absolutely Herculean feeds.

People are very welcome to come and watch. I'd love that, actually. I mean, maybe you could sell the rights to some sporting channel. Why have Golhanger not snap this up? Mad. Yeah. So you and Captain Barclay both, absolute heroes of pedestrianism. And it's in 1809 that Captain Barclay really puts his name on the map.

So this is a feat that rings down the ages. And the Times cover gives a full report to it. And it happened on the 12th of July 1809. The Times report runs two days later on the 14th of July, and it comes from a circuit at Newmarket. So here is the Times. The gentleman on Wednesday completed his arduous pedestrian undertaking to walk a thousand miles in a thousand successive hours

at the rate of a mile in each and every hour. He had until 4 o'clock p.m. to finish his task, but he performed his last mile in the quarter of an hour after three with perfect ease and great spirit amidst an end. immense concourse of spectators. So pluck and spectators, everything that you'd want in a sporting occasion. Let me just work this out. He started this on the 1st of June and he finished it on the 12th of July. So for 42 days, he walked every hour of every day. Surely even the most obtuse listener will have spotted some potential drawbacks.

When does he eat? When does he sleep? When does he go to the toilet? How does that work? So what he does is he walks back to back miles. So he will walk a mile at the end of one hour and then carry on into the next hour, which then kind of freeze up time. So he has kind of 90 minute intervals where he could go to the toilet or snatch a few minutes sleep. So he walks in every hour, but he doesn't walk for the whole hour, basically.

No, so he has to walk a mile every hour. Right. And then once he's done it, then he can have a rest. The sleep is a big issue. I think. He has kind of 90-minute bursts where he can have sleep and then he gets woken up. For 42 days, that's bonkers. Yeah, I mean, it's tough. And this is why it's so celebrated and it features on, you know, in all the newspapers, alongside kind of news of British victories and the Peninsula War and so on. And in fact, the maddest thing of all is that five days after he's completed this walk, Captain Barclay is sailing with his regiment for the low countries. And it goes disastrously wrong. but Captain Barclay continues to be hailed

as a kind of absolute model of British manhood and proof that even though the British Army may not be able to defeat the French in the sporting fields of the low countries We could outwalk them We can absolutely outwalk them because this is not something the French are getting up to No, of course not.

So a great cause of patriotic pride. But also Captain Barclay, you're presenting him as this sort of selfless incarnation of British manhood, but am I not right in saying he's making a lot of money from this. I don't think that that diminishes his pluck and manhood. Okay.

But yes, he's very, very well remunerated. And again, the Times covers this. It's fascinating. It's also a way in which it seems so modern that the sporting feats are celebrated, but there is an obsessive interest in how much money is being generated. So the Times puts it, Captain Barkley had a large sum depending upon his undertaking. The aggregate of the bets is supposed to amount to £100,000. I mean, that's a lot of money at the time.

And so it's not surprising that in the years that follow Barclay's great feat, there are lots of pedestriansists who attempt not just to emulate it, but to surpass it. So in 1815, you have an Essex man named Josiah Eaton who goes just that little bit better than Barclay by undertaking a walk of 1,100 miles in 1,100 hours. And he does this going round and round Blackheath, which is a common in south-east London. and he completes that on Boxing Day and it must have been scheduled because they would have worked out when he would finish it and this again is a pointer

to the great British tradition of sport on Boxing Day. Yeah, of course, yeah. And indeed in Australia, so football and cricket. Yeah, and then the sport goes from strength to strength, doesn't it?

So by the late 1830s, you're really into a golden age of pedestrianism. 1838th, golden year of pedestrian feats. So that year you have one pedestrian who walks 1,250 miles in successive 1,000 hours. So that's basically one and a quarter miles every hour. A bit like cricket, there's quite a lot of maths involved in pedestrianism.

Then another succeeds in walking 1,500 miles in 1,000 hours. And then later in the year, he completes 1,750 miles in 1,000 hours. So in other words, you're having less and less time to complete your miles. But it is Richard Manx in 1851, this extraordinary feat, who passes the ultimate test. So, Dominic, who is Richard Manx, this great forgotten British sportsman? So people know that actually

there are two great sporting heroes in British history. One is Steve Bull and Wolverhampton Wanderers who was from the West Midlands. And Richard Manx, is no coincidence. He's also from the West Midlands. He's a bricklayer, isn't he, from Solihull?

And the bricklaying is key to this, isn't it? Yeah. People say that basically he's used to toiling for hours and hours. Yeah. And Bricklaying has given him tremendous endurance, stamina and strength. Yes. And before he takes up pedestrianism, he's been a runner, a middle distance runner, then a

long distance runner. And he ends up with a splendid nickname of the Warwickshire Antelope, which is actually I don't know if I've ever mentioned this, Dominic before, but my great uncle, Charles Holland, I was an Olympic cyclist and was known as the Midlands Rocket. So another Midlands athlete. Yeah. I think this is about the 40th time on the podcast, but it's lovely to have him back. Well, we've got Steve Bull, my great uncle, and Richard Manx.

And so Richard Manx enters the history books of pedestrianism in 1851. This is his Anas Maribelis. So in June that year, he goes to a cricket club in Sheffield. And I will quote Derek Martin, who's written a great book on this, a short history of the Barclay match. So the Barclay match is, you know, the thing that he established. And again, apologies, there's quite a lot of maths here. So this is what he does in Sheffield. He'd walk 1,000 quarter miles in 1,000 consecutive quarter hours, i.e. 250 miles in 10 days and 10 hours.

Then immediately 1,000 half miles in 1,000 consecutive half hours, i.e. 500 miles in 20 days and 20 hours, Dominic's face, followed immediately by a conventional Barclay match, i.e. that is the 1,000 miles in 1,000 consecutive hours. And this would amount in all to the monumental total of 1,750 miles in 72 days and 22. hours. And as if this were not enough, he would begin walking his quarter miles at the beginning of each quarter hour, the half miles on the half hour and the miles on the hour. So in other words, he is going beyond what Barclay had done. He's not giving himself time to have, you know, lengthy sleeps or anything. When he's doing the quarter miles, I mean, you know, he's having to snap five minute, ten minute snatches of sleep. So really tough. I have to say the reporting of this reminds me of baseball or indeed cricket Tom, as in it's obsessed with stats and it sucks all the

joy out of this swashbuckling sport. Well, obviously, opinions on that will differ. But this is why he's building up to the ultimate challenge, which is what he does at the Oval. He has to walk a thousand miles in a thousand half hours, i.e. has to walk a thousand miles in 500 hours. Right. So that's unbelievably demanding.

A thousand miles in 500 hours. I mean, actually, when you think about it, walking a thousand miles is bonkers. I mean, any time, but to do it in 500 hours. Yeah. And this is a massive sporting deal, right? this is a massive public occasion. People in London are obsessed with this, are genuinely obsessed with it.

I think it is seen as being the Everest of pedestrianism. Once it's been scaled, no one will ever be able to kind of rival it. And people must have been really looking forward to it. Like, Will Messi ever win the World Cup? It's that kind of thing, right? Will Manx pull off this amazing feat. Yes, the sense of occasion is absolutely massive.

And as with any kind of great sporting event, the details are kind of lovingly preserved and cherished and become part of sporting folklore. So things like, you know, what is he eating while he's doing this? So the London Illustrated News reports, he ate around 10 times each day, a diet of game and poultry. Roast beef, mutton and chops, washed down with strong beef tea. Old ale was his favourite restorative, while through the night he drank tea fortified with brandy. Then there are kind of occasional moments where he seems to wobble, perhaps on the verge of giving up. So the 28th October, it rains all day, and it's reported that this gets him down.

The following day, somebody goes to wake him up after he's snatched, you know, five minutes sleep, and he wakes up and punches the guy in the face. He's so angry and upset. And then on the final day of the walk, it's reported at half past two o'clock on Friday morning, so dead of night. He refused to rise, cried like a child, and said to the timekeeper, I shall walk no more, asking, do you want to kill me? But at length, he was induced to persevere unto the finish.

That's mad that on the last day, he thought of dropping out. He's obviously a broken man by that point. I mean, that's it. That's why it's such a great sport, Dominic. You know, will he do it? Will he manage it? Will he get up? Will he punch someone in the face?

He's been doing it for 999 miles and then on the thousand. He says, actually, I've had enough. I wish I never started. But that's precisely the tension. And you know, the madnessing of all. Go on. And this is noted by Dominic Hutton. Manx completes his 1,000th mile.

You know, it's been measured out around the outfield of the Oval. And then it gets properly measured. And they discover that he'd actually walk 12 miles further than he'd needed to. Oh, my word. Imagine you'd be gutted, wouldn't you? I mean, thank God it wasn't 12 miles less. Yeah, that would have been terrible. That would have been terrible.

So a huge success for Richard Manx. But it's also a great success for the ground that staged it, the Oval. Okay. Because it's generated massive media and public interest. It's generated massive crowds. And above all, and the most important thing from the perspective of the consortium that owns the ground, it's generated massive amounts of cash. Right.

And his feat of pedestrianism is drawing on traditions of spectacle and gambling that reach back hundreds of years on Kennington Common. But of course, as we've said, it's also looking forward to this new era of stats and professionalism and the monetisation of what is increasingly coming to be thought of as organised sport. And Dominic, you've heard me say it before. You're about to hear me say it again. I think there is no stadium in the world that better illustrates how we went from kind of pre-modern entertainments to modern sport than the Oval. And that's why in the second half, I hope you will allow me. to stress test that proposition.

Okay, so join us after the break when Tom considers one of the most intriguing questions in all history. This episode is brought to you by The Long Walk, which is out in cinemas on the 12th of September. This is an adaptation of Stephen King's very first book. He wrote it in 1967 when the Vietnam War was tearing America apart and thousands of American boys were being conscripted to fight in their war

and he published it in 1979. And the premise is brutally simple. You have 50 boys and basically you just have to keep walking and if you stop, then you get shot. And the whole reason for doing it is that at the end, if you are the one boy who survives, then you get untold riches. But of course, to get these riches, you have to outwalk the other 49. So it's directed by Francis Lawrence, who is behind several films in the Hunger Games series. And it stars the BAFTA rising star David Johnson. It stars Cooper Hoffman and, of course, my favourite actor, Mark Hamill, who supports Wolfampton Wanderers.

So you can watch The Long Walk exclusively in cinemas from the 12th of September, and you can book tickets at the longwalkmovie.com.com.com.ukukukuk. Hello, I'm William Durimple. And I'm Anita Arndon. We're the hosts of another Goalhanger show, Empire. And we are here to tell you about a recent series we've done on partition. On the 14th and 15th of August, 1947, Pakistan and India announced their independence from the British Empire. But as these nations gained their freedom, their rushed and violent division resulted in the deaths of well over a million people and the forced migration

of over 14 million more. It's a piece of South Asian history that many people are familiar with. But in this series, we want to explore it alongside four less well-known partitions, which continue to affect the region in monumental ways. Yeah, you're quite right. In one episode, we dissect how Dubai almost became part of modern India. And in another, we're going to unpack the history behind the headlines about the conflict in Kashmir. We also explore how the separation of Burma from India is linked to the origin of the Rohingya genocide and how East and West Pakistan separated in 1971 to create Bangladesh.

So if you'd like to hear more about the five-party genocide, that completely transformed modern Asia and how the weight of the memory of partition has been passed down through the generations. We've left a clip of the series at the end of this episode for you to listen to. An affectionate remembrance of English cricket, which died at the Oval on the 29th of August 1882,

deeply lamented by a large, circle of sorrowing friends and acquaintances, R.I.P. N.B. The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. So Tom, that's the most famous obituary in sporting history and it was published in the Sporting Times on the 2nd of September 1882. And I know you're a big cricket fan. There are none bigger. So would you like to explain to our more skeptical listeners American listeners, what on earth is going on? So it commemorates a humiliating defeat of the England national cricket team by the Australian national cricket team four days earlier at the Oval.

And it's that phrase, the ashes will be taken to Australia that will have an enduring afterlife. Because the following winter, the England national cricket team go to Australia and the captain vows before he leaves England that he's going to recover those ashes. and the notion that England and Australia, whenever they play each other at cricket, are competing for the ashes, very rapidly catches on. And today the ashes remain probably the most celebrated, the most enduring international rivalry in cricket, if actually not all sports.

So the ashes will be competed for later this year in Australia. And it all begins at the Oval, which is hardly surprising because, of course, the Oval was founded as a cricket ground, and it remains one to this day. but your skepticism would be justified if I was merely talking about cricket, but I'm not, because the impact the Oval has on the evolution of professional sport is not confined to cricket. So we've seen the role that it played in pedestrianism in the career of Richard Manx, the Warwickshire Antelope. But of course, pedestrianism fades away, perhaps because once Richard Manx has completed that feat, there's nowhere for the sport to go. But the Oval provides a stage,

not just for cricket, but also for two sports that in the second half of the 19th century are exploding in popularity and are destined to have a much brighter future than pedestrianism. And Dominic, the first of these is a sport that you are particularly fond of. Yeah, it's football, association football. So obviously people have been playing football, various kinds of football for a long time, but there's a great vogue, isn't there, in the middle of the 19th century, for codifying games. And this is really borne out of another subject we've done on the rest of this history,

was public schools, boarding schools. So in 1863, a group of, I think they're largely ex-public schoolboys had gathered to codify the rules of association football, as it was called. So that's why Americans call it soccer. Basically, so that people who'd been to different schools and had learned slightly different rules of the game could have a nationally standardized version of the game. And then, of course, it really takes off. And then the other game, Rugby Union. So famously emerges at Rugby School, hence the name. And the thing there was that the boys who played football there since the 1830s have been picking up the ball, which is obviously in association football you're not allowed to do unless you're the goalkeeper. And the backstory

here is that picking up the ball had been outlawed in those football association rules. So some of the clubs had broken away. And the schism between the two codes, association football and rugby football, was formalised in 1871 by the foundation of the RFU, the rugby football union. So basically, now you have what was originally one sport turning into two, and of course rugby will then divide even further. And so for the Oval's point of view, I guess this is wonderful because they have codified sports that actually not just rich and well-connected boarding school boys, but also vast crowds of working men, are very enthusiastic about, which means a lot of opportunities for charging ticket prices. Yes, and for staging not just kind of local sporting events, but

international ones. And the mad thing is that England against Australia at cricket is not the first international sports fixture to be staged at the Oval. Because in fact, by 1880, which is when the first cricket international test matches, as they're called, to be played in England is staged at the Oval. The ground has already hosted internationals in both football and rugby. It has also hosted athletics meetings. And even in 1889, it goes on to host a baseball match between the Chicago white stockings and an all-American team. And this is big, big news in London. Loads of celebrities come to watch it.

The Prince of Wales turns up. W.G. Grace, who's this huge kind of barrel-chested, hearsuit cricketer, one of the most famous men in late Victorian England. They all go, but inevitably, this being England, it gets rained off. Of course it does. And sadly, baseball doesn't really take off as a result. So, of course, the Oval is a cricket ground, but it's absolutely not just. just a cricket ground. And in the mid-19th century, this lack of specialisation is reflecting

kind of two influences. And one is its roots in the pre-industrial culture of Kennington Common, which plays host to every kind of conceivable sport. But it's also a reflection of the fact that its owners want to make as much money as possible. And that, of course, is looking forward to today's culture of hyper-professional sport. So let's start by looking backwards. So you said the pre-industrial culture of Kennington Common. So Kennington, the King's Estate, basically, the King's Farm or whatever. So it had belonged to the Crown. We know that Edward III gave it to Fend of the Restist's history, the Black Prince

in the 14th century. And from that point onwards, it had traditionally belonged to the heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales. Yes. So it has a kind of very strong royal connection. But it's also sediment the people's open space. So it's a common, an area where tenants of various manners, including the Prince of Wales, is that Kennington have a right to pasture their animals.

And anyone familiar with London, particularly South London, will know that it's covered with commons. So Clapham Commons, Streatham Common, Wimbledon Common, and so on. But the thing about Kennington is that of all the commons, it's the closest to the city of London and to Westminster. and over the course of the 17th and then into the 18th century, the city of London and Westminster are kind of congealing and cojoining to become one vast urban sprawl. And as a result of that, by the 18th century, Kennington Common is becoming the place where people from Westminster

and the city are going to play sport. So you have the earliest recorded cricket match there is 1724, and it's London against Dartford, of course, the home of Mick Jagger, great cricket fan, so that's good to know. But it's also the home throughout the 18th century of a very famous sports club called the Gymnastic Society, which, despite its name, actually it organizes wrestling, but is best known as a football club. And in fact, is often described by football historians as the first football club to be organized as such on a kind of coherent basis. And there's another sport, isn't there, that's played there, which is the

regular encounters between criminals and the hangman. Yes. Isn't that right? Yeah, and this is kind of viewed as, I mean, it's not exactly a sport, but it's certainly an entertainment similar to sport. But if you think about a spectrum, Tom, of public spectacles, and cricket is at one end, and, you know, bull baiting or cockfighting is at the other, public executions do kind of sit on that spectrum a bit because they're big spectacles and there's lots of hawkers and people selling pies and kids go and all of this. So it is part of that world. Yes. And it means that the place where the gallows is situated is very strongly associated with public assemblies and people having fun. And the gallows stands on what today is St. Mark's Church directly outside what is now the Oval Tube Station on one side. And on the other side, Goldhanger Towers.

Yeah, the offices of our production company. Our production company, they would have been able to look out of the window and watch people being hanged. Yeah. So it would have been great fun. Whereas now Theo can watch us executing history on Zoom or whatever. Very good. So it's basically the South London equivalent of Tyburn Hill, what's now Marble Arch. And the most celebrated high women to be hanged there do have something of the status of great sporting heroes.

You know, there are people who display great charisma, great self-confidence, great self-control. And the most famous of all is a guy called Jerry Abashore who was very notorious highwayman. absolute lad who is hanged there in 1795. And so someone records his progress to the gallows, a bit like they're describing, I don't know, a batsman going to the Wicked or something. He kept up an incessant conversation with the persons who rode beside the car, frequently laughing and nodding to others of his acquaintances, whom he perceived in the crowd, which was immense. So you can imagine him kind of pointing to them and giving thumbs up. And then after his death, he's hung in chains on a gibbet on Wimbledon Common.

so he's the last hireman to suffer this fate, and it's meant to be a humiliation. But in a sense, it's a marker of his fame. This is someone who people wants to go and see even once he's dead. But sadly, for fans of public hangings, the age of executions as entertainment starting to pass. And the last execution on Kennington Common takes place in 1799. And this is partly for kind of squeamish, hand-winging, woke reasons. But it's also because Kennington Common. common is increasingly vanishing beneath brick. And so people start to worry that not only hangings

but also opportunities to do wrestling and football and cricket and so on will vanish completely from this great public area of congregation for people from London. And this is why local businessmen spot an opportunity. So in March 1845, a consortium headed by a chemist from Brixton Hill, I'm proud to say, where I live. And this is a guy called William Houghton. They buy the lease for a new cricket ground on Kennington Common, and they call it the oval because there is a river called the Ephra, which is now completely culverted and covered up, but it curves. And so the oval is situated in that curve, and it forms an oval. It's not a great area, very, very smelly. So there's a report that it's in a most ruinous

condition and from the effluvium arising from decayed vegetables, a nuisance and a source of ill health. So they have to bring in 10,000 lumps of turf from Tootin Common kind of cover up this rotting vegetation. And the other problem with the Oval is that Houghton, this chemist from Brixton Hill, turns out to be involved in all kinds of dodgy real estate deals. And this is the guy who books the pedestrianism event, Manx's for great feat, makes lots of money, but not enough. And by 1854, he's in such financial problems that he essentially has to hand the consortium over to his brother. And the following year, he declares bankruptcy. And the risk is that his financial misadventures will drag down the Oval. It will have to be sold off to developers.

And there will be nowhere for people, you know, in Kennington to have sport at all. And that's a very familiar story to anybody who follows sport today. You know, I mean, to our American listeners, you know, the way that NFL franchises move from city to city and there's always arguments about the stadiums and whatnot. So what happens? So it doesn't get sold off. Local enthusiasts, again, a very familiar story, you know, effectively local fans step in to save the ground. Yeah, so these are members of what's called the Surrey Club, and these are basically the people who organise cricket clubs across the county of Surrey, which Kennington is a part of. And in 1845, so that's the same year that Houghton had set up the Oval, a hundred of these members from these various cricket clubs meet in a pub around the corner from the Oval. And the Sunday Times reports what happened, that it was proposed to form a cricket club for the county of Surrey, the objects of which would mainly be to seek out and to bring together the playing strength of the county with a view of placing Surrey in the prominent position it had for many years in days long since past held in the cricket world.

So this is a kind of classic Victorian manoeuvre. You've got sports enthusiasts meeting in pubs, founding clubs, drawing up rules. And as with the guys who meet to draw up the FA, football association, yeah. Yeah. So with these guys meeting in the pub round from the Oval, it's not just that they set up a cricket club for Surrey. In the long run, Surrey will become part of a broader championship, a county championship. So counties playing cricket across England, which is still going strong to this day. So this is the kind of the popular end of sport, the sense of local fans, local organizers,

people who have a commitment to their local club. But there is also something that will also be very familiar to people who follow sport today, which is the engagement of those who are very, very well connected, very rich, and in lots of cases, thinking of certain football clubs today, actually royal. So in the case of the Oval, back in the mid-Victorian period, I mean, it couldn't be more Victorian, because the person who also steps in to save the Oval is none other than the husband of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert. And he is acting on behalf of the young Prince of Wales, so the future Edward the 7th, who is the landlord of the Oval, ultimately. And Prince Albert refuses to allow the Oval to be sold to developers. And he gives his backing to

the Surrey Committee. And it's this that enables them in 1845 when it looks as though the Oval will have to be sold to step in and take over control of the ground. And is this because the future Edward the seventh is a big cricket fan? I mean, Prince Albert, presumably, he doesn't give a damn about cricket. No, he doesn't particularly, and nor does Prince Albert. But I think they see it as Prince Albert's a great enthusiast for manliness and outdoor activities and all that kind of thing. And he thinks that it would be good for the working masses to have this ground. Fresh air. Yeah. And to this day, the Prince of Wales is the Oval's landlord. So Prince William is the landlord of the Oval, even though obviously he'd rather, I think, be the landlord of

Villa Park than the Oval. He knows a lot about football, actually. There was an interview with him. Tom, dare I say, I think he knows a tiny bit more than you do. Well, he hangs out on Aston Villa kind of Reddit groups and fan forums and so on. Does he? Yeah, he does. He's very, very knowledgeable.

Right. I think less interested in cricket, although the badge of Surrey is the three feathers, that is the badge of the Prince of Wales, which ultimately comes from the Black Prince and his great feat at the Battle of Cressy. So the saving of the Oval, and indeed the creation of the Oval at all, You could see sort of stepping back. It's part of a wider process, isn't it? Not just in sport, actually, between Victorian social and leisure life generally,

which is all about codifying, structuring, professionalising, kind of taming the disruptive energies of things and sort of streamlining them and sorting them all out. And once you've got grounds and you've got clubs, I mean, the Victorians love a club, but once they've got clubs, they then love a league, don't they? Or a cup competition. We're very familiar with that now, and we take it for granted.

But they basically invent that model. Yes, because once you have leagues and cups, it's not just a matter of arranging one-off matches or sporting events. You can have kind of continuous income flow because you have match after match after match and it's all kind of predicated. Right. And this today is the infrastructure that professional sport completely depends upon. And as you say, we take it for granted. But to Victorian sports entrepreneurs in the second half of the 19th century, I mean, it's like stumbling on a gold mine. No one had ever thought of doing this before.

No. And suddenly they're thinking, brilliant. We can just make so much money here. Right. And so I think it's not surprising that the administrators at the Oval, which effectively is the first great sports ground to have transformed itself into a business, so much more overtly say than Lords, which is the posh people's ground. It's not surprising that they blaze the path.

And there is one person in particular who does this with a kind of exhausting display of energy and enthusiasm, it seems almost kind of stereotypically Victorian. And this is a guy called Charles W. Orcock. He couldn't be more Victorian. He has a mustache. He has a cravat. He's got kind of great shoulders honed by sport at public school. And it's basically just exhausting to contemplate his career, I think.

Yeah, it's incredible. He is the classic example of an industrialist son who goes to a private school and ends up in a completely different sphere from. you know, his horny-handed father. So he's born in Sunderland, like that other great football enthusiast, Jonathan Wilson, a friend of the show. Yeah.

And he goes to Harrow, and at Harrow, he plays football and cricket, and he absolutely loves it. And his basic feeling is when he leaves his public school, why should he have to give up sport? He wants to carry on with it. So he makes a living as a sports journalist,

covering football, covering cricket, covering athletics. But it turns out his real genius is for sports, Sports Administration. So in 1870, he becomes not just the secretary, but the treasurer of the FA, the Football Association. And then two years later, he becomes secretary of Surrey County Cricket Club, which is based at the Oval. So he doesn't just like sport. He loves committee meetings. He does. He does. And he loves to organise fixtures and then to play in them.

Right. So he has the best of both worlds. And the thing is, you'd approve of this, Dominic, his real game, even though he's kind of based at the Oval, isn't cricket, but football. And he's a very famous figure in the history of football. Enormously famous. When you read the early history of football, he's everywhere. He's kind of in every page. Yes. So in 1863, he found a side that to begin with is full of old Horovians.

So Alcox chums from his public school called The Wanderers. And they play what is called the combination game in which you actually pass the ball rather than just dribbling it. Right. You know, and this again is looking forward to the future. And in 1869, Alcock sets them up at the Oval. So the Oval becomes their home. So you play cricket through the summer and then you play football through the winter.

And in 1872, he institutes a cup competition for the Football Association, the FAA Cup. And inevitably, he arranges for the final to be held at the Oval. And also inevitably, he captains the team and the World. wanderers win. Yeah, of course they do. So they win 1-0 and Alcock had actually scored a goal but it gets disqualified because they'd been a handball. Oh no. So kind of prototype for VAR I guess kicking in and spoiling things. Right. And the Wanderers go on to win the FAA Cup in 1873 as well and then again they win in consecutive years in 1876, 1877 and 78 and all three of those consecutive victories are one at the Oval. And in fact, the Oval stages 19 FAA Cup finals in

all and interest to both of us. So this includes the first victory won by Ashton Villa in the FA Cup in 1887 and then two years later in 1889, Dominic, Wolves' first appearance in an FA Cup final. Yeah, first appearance, we didn't win. We lost 3-0 to Preston. Very disappointing. Very sad. But also international sports, right?

You know, we're so used to the idea of international sport now, but you could argue it was invented by this Blake Alcock. Yes. So in 1879, you know, he's set up the FA Cup and then he thinks, well, well, why don't we get England to play Scotland? And the match is held, of course, at the Oval. And of course, all cocked captains England. And the result is a one-all draw.

Right. Sadly, this match isn't recognised by FIFA because the Scottish team is drawn from Scotsman living in London. Oh. And this includes Gladstone, the Prime Minister's son. Really? But they don't have people actually from Scotland because it seems as being too far for them to come all the way down.

Right. So that's why it's not recognised. So that's a great shame. There's one other sport we talked about earlier, which was rugby. He also organises the first rugby international as well at the Oval, England, Scotland again, 1872. Yeah, I mean, it's just astonishing. And then, of course, there is cricket. And inevitably, again, it's Alcock who's the presiding genius behind setting up international test matches between England and Australia.

And this is the series of matches that in due course will give birth to the ashes. So Orcock, he's clearly of international standard of football, less so at cricket. He does play county cricket, but doesn't play for England. But he makes up for this by being the first person in England to recognise how much money there might be in international cricket. So international cricket has been played in Australia. England has played Australia there. But people in England think, oh, I mean, we're above this.

I mean, it's a kind of vulgar. It's a showy spectacle. We're not going to bother with it. But Alcock recognises that if it can make money in Australia, then why not in England? So in 1880, he manages to stage the first test match to be played in England at the Oval. And it's a tremendous success. So WG Grace, this great bearded kind of sports star, he scores a century, England win, and the match is a complete sellout. So Caching.

And then in 1882, the Australians come back. And this is the notorious England defeat, or glorious, if you're an Australian listener, that inspires the obituary in sporting times. And again, it's a tremendous sporting occasion. And the hero this time is an Australian called Fred Spoffoth, who has an absolutely magnificent Australian fast bowler's moustache kind of drooping down past his chin.

Excellent, yeah. He's called the demon. So from that point on, all fast bowlers are called demons. He takes 14 wickets, which for people who don't know about cricket is very, very good, because the maximum you can take is 20.

England lose very, very narrowly. And again, a bit like with Max's feet of pedestrianism, the ground is absolutely full, streets outside are heaving, people sit there chewing their way through umbrella handles. It's so tense. People have heart attacks, all that kind of thing. And it's an enormous success. And I think that match like that, matches like, you know, the FAA Cups, the first rugby international, they kind of establish a romance around these sporting events that in

years to this day. And that's why, you know, whether it's the ashes or whatever, it's one of the great achievements of the Victorian era that they established templates that people still are inspired by to this day. Yeah, absolutely. What happened to pedestrianism? That's the real question. Well, what's interesting is that it fades out in Britain, but it becomes very popular in the second half of the 19th century in America. Really? Yeah, I guess because there it's something novel. So right the way through the 19th century, New York becomes the new great center for pedestrianism. And then at the end of the 19th century, it fades away too. But I think if there's anyone, you know, any sports administrators or involved in sports media

listening to this, a revival of pedestrianism is long overdue. Right. The irony that today there are great swathes of the United States where if you walk down the street, you know, the police will pull over. Come back. Arrest you for not driving. Why don't you rediscover your love of pedestrianism, America? listeners. Sort yourselves out. So Tom, this is not the only sporting podcast of the week, is it? Because we'll be delving back into sporting history on Thursday. Do you want to tell

people all about that? Yeah. So in that show, we'll be looking not at a team sport, but at boxing. And we'll be looking specifically at one of the most celebrated, extraordinary and influential sporting contests of all time. And it's a boxing match that is held in a field in rural Hampshire in 1860 between the rival champions of England and America. And Dominic, if people want to tune into that right away, is there a way they can do that? There is, because rather like a Victorian public school association, we've started our own sporting club. It's called The Rest Is History Club, and you can sign up at the rest is history.com,

and you get all kinds of benefits. And one of those benefits is you can hear that episode right away. So do not miss it under any circumstances. Absolutely. Well, Tom, that was a pedestrian That was a positively pedestrian episode. Yeah, a pedestrian performance

Worthy of Richard Manx himself. Thank you very much. And on that, Bomber shell, we will see you for the fight of the century next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Hi.

Hi. It's William Drimple here. again from Empire, another Goldhanger podcast. Here's the clip from our recent series on the five partitions that created modern Asia. And it was deeply emotional. Sparsh picked up some pebbles from the village, which he made into jewelry, family heirloons, for his family going down the generations.

Because he was always saying, you know, my family doesn't have archives, etc. We lost everything in partition. And there's nothing that we have from Beela to show where we came from. But so he wanted to pick up something from Beela and make it into airlines for the next generations, you know, three, four generations from now,

they'll still have a piece of Bela with them, even if, you know, the relationship between India and Pakistan worsens again. And, you know, even if his kids can never visit Bela, they'll always have a piece of Bela with them. This connection with Earth, Dherty, you know, they call it Dharthi in India, and Zamin is the Udu word for exactly the same thing. But it is much more than just the earth. It is who you are, where you have grown from, where your forebears have grown. from. And the number of people I know who have been lucky enough to travel across the border, and I count myself as one, who find it impossible to leave without a scoop of Earth. And I have one too. You know, in Lahore, picked up a handful of Earth and brought it back with me.

Because I thought, you know, this is the stuff my grandfather used to walk on. To hear the full series, just search Empire wherever you get your podcasts.