One thing about having a collection of memorabilia, portraits, cups, books, blazers and cricket balls – along with all the other strange objects that have over the years attached themselves to Kent County Cricket Club – is that decisions have to be made about what to collect, what to keep and what to dispose of.

Some things are obviously an essential part of the collection. We have to have the trophies we have won over the years, the ball that Tich Freeman used to destroy an unfortunate eleven in the 1930s, the scorebook showing W.G. Grace’s 344 not out for M.C.C. against Kent, and a complete set of Kent “Blue Book” annuals. We have to keep photographs of winning teams, autographed scorecards and one of the plates manufactured to celebrate Colin Cowdrey’s one hundred hundreds. Decisions on those items are simple: they are part of the fabric of Kent’s cricketing heritage and they belong in our collection.

But when we come to some other items, we have to consider carefully whether they ought to be preserved. How do we decide what should be in our collection and what should not? What is surplus to requirements and what do we absolutely have to keep? And what is missing from the collection that we really ought to have?

The first decision is that we are only interested in things that are relevant to Kent cricket. We then add a few peripherals, like our complete set of Wisdens, but in general we can be ruthless about anything that is not part of Kent’s cricket heritage. For this reason, we held a very successful sale of second-hand books during the summer, including several copies of Dickie Bird’s autobiography, and will probably repeat the exercise next year. It also means that we are less interested in, for example, Colin Cowdrey’s England blazer than his Kent cap. The best place for England cricket memorabilia is Lord’s, but we hope that everybody will agree that the best place for Kent memorabilia is the Spitfire Ground in Canterbury (and Beckenham, too).

The next decision to be made is regarding the definition of “Kent cricket”. We have decided that we are dealing with the heritage of all cricket played in Kent, since the first mentions of the game around 400 years ago. We obviously concentrate most of our attention on the men’s game at professional level, but we are also trying to build up the collection of club and league cricket memories, as well as items connected to the women’s game which, beginning with the fabled Christina Willes two centuries ago, is now a thriving and successful part of our cricket story. All donations gratefully received!

E.H.V. Weigall

The collection should not just be a collection of bats with which centuries were made, or balls with which hat-tricks were taken: we have plenty of them and although we will always accept more, there is much more to our heritage than that. What about the coloured kits that our white-ball cricketers have been wearing over the seasons? Should we not have a complete collection of them, for the record if nothing else. Some of our kits have been quite smart, and some have been truly disastrous, but they all have a place in our collection. This leads on to another point, one of aesthetic taste. Even though one item may be less pleasing to the eye than another, it does not mean it is less worthy of a place in our collection.

Which brings us on to our collection of paintings. There are in the Long Room of the Chiesman Pavilion two paintings which illustrate the point. The first is the painting that takes pride of place on the back wall of the pavilion, a portrait of our 1946 President, E.H.V. Weigall, by his father, the noted portrait painter Henry Weigall. This is a good quality painting of an average quality player. Evelyn Weigall played just one first-class match, for his much more talented brother Gerry Weigall’s XI against Cambridge University in 1908. He made 0 and 14 and did not take a wicket in 13 overs of right-arm medium pace, but he served on our county committees with distinction before being elected President in 1946. He sadly became one of a handful to die in office, at the age of 70. The question is, should this comparatively unknown Kent stalwart take pride of place on the pavilion wall, just because it is a pretty good portrait? For the time being, we answer yes.

George Marsham

We have recently been given a portrait of an earlier Kent President, one George Marsham, who played three times for Kent in 1876 and 1877, as a wicket-keeper. He batted at number 11, and conceded more byes (58) in his first-class career than he scored runs (36). He had a long and distinguished career on the Kent committee, and became President in 1886, when he was 36 years old. The problems with his portrait are many. Firstly, it is of such a size (5′ x 6′) that there is no suitable wall to hang it on. Secondly, it is in such poor condition (it was rescued from a building about to be demolished) that an expert’s estimate is that it would cost about £3,000 to repair, and thirdly, it is not a particularly good portrait anyway. So we have decided against keeping it. This may be hard on George Marsham, whose nephew C.H.B. “Slug” Marsham led Kent with distinction in the early years of the last century, but his is not the first painting to have been disposed of by the Club.

The famous “Kent v Lancashire 1906” painting by Albert Chevallier Tayler – which incidentally includes Slug Marsham – was sold by the Club twelve years ago because it had become too expensive to insure. Before it was sold, a copy was made by the brilliant copyist Barrington Bramley and it is that painting which now hangs on the same wall as E.H.V. Weigall in the pavilion. It is probably the most valuable painting in our collection, even though it is a copy. The original sold for around £600,000, making it at that time the most expensive cricket painting in the world. If you want to see it now, you need to go to Lord’s, where it hangs in the pavilion.

So the Kent collection is growing, but along carefully defined lines. All we need now is enough space to display it all!