The Club was reconstituted in 1863 and the tenancy of a field on North Marine Road was obtained. In 1871 Lord Londesborough promoted a match between his own XI and a team chosen by C.I. Thornton who visited Lord Londesborough in Scarborough. The match was a great success but resulted in Lord Londesborough, who found the facilities at Castle Hill wanting, writing to Scarborough Cricket Club advising them that if his patronage was to continue then they must either improve the ground at North Marine Road or find another ground.
The North Marine Road Ground was consequently enlarged and levelled during the winter of 1871-1872 and since that time has staged local, county, and international cricket. With regard to ground improvements, the present-day Pavilion was built in 1896, at a cost of £2,150 and at approximately the same time, the covered seating at the Trafalgar Square end (the Enclosure) was built as was the seating on the Popular Bank. The North Stand was built in 1926 and the post war boom in attendances saw record crowds at the Ground with well over 20,000 on some days. The West Stand was erected in 1956 replacing a long low building which had been known as the Cow Sheds.
In 1876, when Lord Londesborough himself became MCC President, the Cricket programme at Scarborough was extended to nine days and the main match was again MCC v Yorkshire with MCC managed by C.I.Thornton. This was the start of first world famous Scarborough Festival and with the exception of the War years, the festival continued to be an annual event for well over a century but changing circumstances have caused the club to adapt to the times. Gone are the days of the Leveson Gower and T.N. Pearce X1s versus the International Touring sides, the MCC and Gentlemen v Players fixtures but what we do have at North Marine Road in 2026 is the attraction of Yorkshire playing two four day Championship matches and two first class one day fixtures.
Scarborough Cricket Club has always had tremendous success in league cricket and some very good Yorkshire players have been Scarborough players, amongst them being David Byas, Craig White, Adam Lyth, Bill Foord, Chris Clifford, Phil Hart, Brian Close, David Hunter, Ted Lester, John Tunnicliffe, Vic Wilson and more but probably the best known, certainly in his time, was George Hirst.
The golden period for the club was in the 1970s and 80s when the National Club Knock Out Trophy was secured on five occasions together with six Yorkshire League championships.
C.I. Thornton in 1875
G.F. Wells-Cole in 1901
C.G. Pepper in 1945
There are one or two conflicting stories about exactly where the ball crossed into the square in each case but it is generally accepted that all three achieved the feat. Many others have claimed to have done so but some have hit chimney pots and others gone through the gap.
In his biography, Lord Hawke stated:’ At Scarborough I was in the field to the biggest hit I ever saw C.I.Thornton make. Buns helped himself to 107 runs in just over an hour. His mightiest slog was from the Pavilion end when he drove the ball straight over the screen, so high that it hit a chimney on the roof of one of the houses outside the ground.’
This report was confirmed in a letter to the Scarborough Mercury published in 1921 from Fredrick Andrews who became Headmaster of the Quaker School at Ackworth and witnessed it as a Scarborough player on the field at the time.
G.F. Cole –Wells is the least well known of the three although his reputation was widespread around Lincolnshire. He played for Lincolnshire, MCC and I Zingari. In August 1901 playing as a guest for Scarborough against Gentlemen of Yorkshire, he made 387 runs in four and a half hours, including the six into Trafalgar Square. The hit was witnessed by Harry Leadbetter, one of Scarborough’s best left-handed batsmen, who reported in a newspaper article that Wells-Cole made an on drive which rose six or seven feet over the house tops with a clear drop into the Square. Harry Leadbetter also witnessed the Thornton six and claimed the Wells-Cole six was higher and bigger.
The third of the big hitters is Cec Pepper, an Australian all-rounder who played for the Australian Services against Leveson-Gower’s XI in September 1945. In the match he scored 168 runs in the Services first innings and took six wickets over two innings as they won by an innings.
When the big hit came Eric Hollies was the bowler and Keith Miller was batting at the other end. According to Pepper, Arthur Wood who was keeping wicket, bet him a bottle of whisky that he could not hit one over the houses.
Here’s hoping for a fourth big hitter!
