Trent Bridge

The heritage and beauty of the Heart of the Midlands brings visitors from the world over

Trent Bridge, heritage, beauty and the Heart of the Midlands

Trent Bridge has played host to ICC Cricket World Cup matches, and has hosted The Ashes Test Series for many years and even featured Atomic Kitten who performed at Trent Bridge ahead of the Twenty20 Final.

 

Trent Bridge - The Best Ground For BIG Hitting in the World?

 

Trent Bridge is one of the oldest Test grounds, and finest cricket venues in the world.

Trent Bridge is the home of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club and as well as one of Nottingham's most famous landmarks, it's one of England's biggest and most famous cricket grounds. As a test match ground the location is famous the world over with cricket fans. Trent Bridge hosted its first Test match in 1899, with England playing against Australia. The cricket ground takes its name from the nearby main bridge over the Trent. The ground is considered by players and spectators to be one of the most pleasant in England, the architecture having been kept within the parameters set by the 1886 pavilion.

 

Trent Bridge: A Journey Through Time: Nottinghams Trent Bridge in its different guises!

 

Trent Bridge history that started with a medieval bridge

For hundreds of years there was a single bridge over the River Trent, which gave the inhabitants of Nottingham access to the towns and villages south of the county town. An inn was built at the southern end of the bridge, so that travellers who arrived in the vicinity of Nottingham late at night, when the walled town was closed, could wait at the inn until entering the town in the morning.

The Trent Inn, generally known as the Trent Bridge Inn, was therefore not located in Nottingham but in the small agricultural village of West Bridgford. When cricket developed into a public spectacle in Nottingham during the latter half of the 18th century, the chief cricket ground was the grassed, levelled area inside the town's oval race-course, on a large acreage of land called 'The Forest' - about one mile north of the town. The first bona fide inter-county Nottinghamshire game was staged, against Sussex, on The Forest in 1835. The cricketers were unable to charge admission to watch this, and other major games, because The Forest was owned by the Town Council.

In December 1837, the captain and self-appointed manager of the Nottinghamshire team, William Clarke, married the landlady of the Trent. The following spring he laid a cricket ground in the meadow attached to the inn. The meadow was bordered on one side by the road to Radcliffe on Trent and Grantham and on the adjacent side by the lane to West Bridgford church. The other two sides were bounded by hedges separating the meadow from the land belonging to West Bridgford Hall, which could be seen across the fields.

Clarke erected a close-boarded fence round his ground and using the inn as accommodation for the cricketers, arranged that all major matches involving Nottinghamshire should use his ground, rather than The Forest.

In 1872 the county club were in a position to erect a much more elaborate pavilion on the opposite side of the ground from the Inn. The successes continued, so much so that within ten years the new pavilion was found to be totally inadequate. The County Committee took the lease of a further two acres at the rear of the pavilion and built in 1886 the then largest pavilion in England - within ten years, Lord's, Old Trafford and The Oval had more than matched this however!

 

Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club: Trent Bridge Cricket Ground viewed using a sequence of Google earth animations.

 

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