Modern cricketers enjoy the comforts of air-conditioned global hotel chains and flexible schedules, but the sport’s touring past was a different experience altogether. Arriving at Grindleford station in the Peak District reveals a landscape of damply beautiful autumn trees and rolling valleys leading up to Padley Gorge. Well rewarded and with plenty of time for golf, he or she might feel perfectly content, a s the modern cricketer hops from Crowne Plaza to Holiday Inn. But life has not always been a merry-go-round of air-con and airports. Where homemade bunting loops along the platform fence, highlighting books about trains in this national year of reading, and you’re in the Peak District, hop off the train at Grindleford. Golden beech, rusty horse chestnut, hues of greens and yellows, disappear up the slopes of Padley Gorge and into the valleys.
A short walk along Station Road brings visitors to The Maynard, formerly the Maynard Arms, which hosted international cricket teams during the mid-twentieth century while they played county fixtures against Derbyshire and Yorkshire. Tucked behind the reception and bar is a small collection of team photos, bats, and autographs paying tribute to those visiting sides.
Team archives show the Australian squad first stayed at the property in 1930 to escape the industrial noise of Sheffield. A twenty-one-year-old Don Bradman appears in the front row of the team photograph, fresh off a summer that included 334 runs against England at Headingley, over 1,000 runs by May, and 974 runs across the Ashes series. The Australians first stayed here in 1930, to escape the noise of Sheffield, then a city of steelworks and smoking chimneys, according to the caption accompanying the team photo. Just 21, stares back in his blazer from the front row, legs stretched out, arms crossed, a young Don Bradman.
Australia returned to the location for a ten-day stay between June 28 and July 7, 1938, playing Derbyshire at Chesterfield and Yorkshire at Sheffield. Writing in the Maitland Mercury in July 1938, a correspondent noted that after passing through the long tunnel from Sheffield’s steelworks, the hotel offered an ideal haven of rest for the touring players. Unpacking their suitcases for 10 days, from 28 June to 7 July, playing against Derbyshire at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield, and Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, when only rain, australia returned to Grindleford in 1938.
Despite the peaceful setting, the tourists occasionally caused minor chaos. Lindsay Hassett reportedly smuggled a complaining mountain goat into his room to the dismay of roommates Stan McCabe and Bill O’Reilly, with contemporary accounts confirming the animal left the bedroom in a remarkable state. Jack Fingleton later recalled in his book Cricket Crisis that players locked their doors the following night after Hassett discovered a hedgehog.
These antics did not deter the hotel from honoring fifteen players by naming rooms after them, including Ben Barnett, Jack Fingleton, and Jack Badcock. The bridal suite, featuring a roll-top bath and views over the hills, is named after Bradman, while other rooms honor members of the 1951 South African touring squad.
Following World War II, Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles stayed at the hotel during a tour where they remained undefeated. Local accounts indicate Keith Miller spent an evening in the bar and missed the team bus to Sheffield, leading a journalist to lend him ten pounds for a taxi fare that was repaid years later in Melbourne.
Journalist Basil Easterbrook recalled a similar incident from 1953 when captains Lindsay Hassett and manager George Davies travelled to London, leaving Miller in charge. After an oversight left Miller and Ray Lindwall without an early morning call, the two fast bowlers found themselves scrambling at 11 a.m. while thirty thousand fans waited at Bramall Lane for a match to resume at 11:30.
Miller secured a local undertaker’s Rolls-Royce, and the trio drove urgently across the moors to arrive outside Bramall Lane just two minutes before play recommenced. Easterbrook noted that nineteen years later, a greying Ray Lindwall repaid the borrowed five pounds by tucking the cash into his jacket pocket.
Local historian Alan Jacques, born in Grindleford in 1951, remembers visiting The Maynard as a child to collect autographs from the 1965 South African team, the last international side to tour before sporting isolation. He retains his 1963 autograph book containing signatures from West Indian players including Lance Gibbs, Alf Valentine, Seymour Nurse, and Derek Murray, who spent time sitting on the wall outside the hotel.
