Craigengower Cricket Club [1922- ]

Hi there,

From a photo album at the website of the CCC Website it showed the current Club House was opened on 27th May 2007.  It did not mentioned when did the old club house was demolished for rebuilt, however.  That whole plot of land had been rearranged along with the Race Course Extension, HKFA relocation & Sports Road re-route back then.

Thanks & Best Regards,

T

Many people, for instance have-wondered how Craigengower got its Scots-like name.  Away back in the nineties of last century there used to be a Victoria English School in Caine Road. Its headmaster Mr. W. D. Braidwood resident in a house called " Craigengower. It was he who formed a sports club  at Happy Valley, for the boys and he called the Club after the name of his dwelling.

Mr. Braidwood was Craigengower’s first President, and before his retirement from Hongkong was Headmaster of the Ellis Kadoorie School prior to this institution being taken over by the Hongkong Government. " Craigengower Cricket Club was the first club to occupy a site on the new recreation grounds at Happy Valley. This was in the year 1897. It was not, however, until 1901, that a clubhouse was built. About the same time the Police and Civil Service also built their matshed Club-houses.

Source: Old Hong Kong by Colonial Vol 1

I played cricket for a year for CCC in 1994/95.

It was I understood the Club's centenary year as we had the club logo on our chests and Centenary 1894-1994 embroidered on the sleeves.

On the rare occasion we practiced our "nets" were set up on an artificial grass tennis court at the club.  There was no cricket ground at the club and I suspect there hadn't been for quite a while.

Not surprisingly we didnt win that many games!

The history of Craigengower Cricket Club can also be read here in the China Mail dated 1 July 1941. Mention is also made of the house "Craigengower" on Caine Road and their first ground at Breezy Point and subsequent allotment at Happy Valley in 1900.

I played cricket in the Saturday league from about 1972 for perhaps 25 years. I fondly recall playing at the CCC several times in the earlier part of that period until its use as a cricket ground was discontinued. The story I heard was that Chinese membership increased and preferred tennis and other activities over cricket and the cricket players lost their pitch. I can't vouch for that but it sounds about right. The land became increasingly valuable, of course; is the club still operating on that site and, if so, has some of the land been sold off?

We used to live on Morrison Hill Road for 11 years (1950-1961) until we moved to a house on Broadwood Road after our leave in 1961.

The Police Recreation Club (PRC) was opposite our flats and we were members, me being a very active one going down there to play every afternoon after school (at QBS) and especially, around the middle of the 50s, when they had a TV set and we didn't yet!

The PRC was "next door" to the CCC but there was no actual border to show where the PRC stopped as there was a huge expanse of green "lawn" for both clubs. In the winter, the PRC used to erect portable blue canvas tennis "backing" and the fah wong would get the white stripe roller and mark the tennis courts & erect the nets - there were about 4 or 5 courts on their side of the lawn.

During the summer months, that area of PRC's green lawn was the cricket patch, and the poor fah wong had to get his white stripe roller out to mark out the pitch!

This photo shows me and my sister (Lindy) playing a dubious game of mini golf on the PRC lawn in 1956 (snapshot taken from an 8mm bit of film my father took of us)  :D

I love/loved my father to pieces but having transferred all his 8mm movies to USBs (and there were A LOT), I was rather dismayed to notice that he concentrated on the person he was filming and not so much on the area they were in, which I would have thought would have been so much more interesting :/