When cricket bats were made in Bolton

Bolton has a very long cricketing tradition, with a strong League and Association, and those rare warm Saturday and Sunday afternoons in summer would not be the same without those men dressed in white battling for honours.

How many of those playing today, though, know that world-famous cricket bats were once made in Bolton?

If a bat was a "Windett and Smith", it was top quality. Indeed, there were players including the great Ernest Tyldesley, of Lancashire and England, who would use no other make, and it was one of these bats, in the powerful grip of George Geary, the Leicestershire all-rounder, that made the winning hit for England when they once won the ashes in Australia! And that's a rare event in itself!

Three generations of the Windett family made cricket bats in Bolton. Grandad Edgar Windett spent 60 years of his working life on that one task, followed by Mr Harold E Windett, and then Mr Edgar Windett. Don't ask me who the Smith was in the name Windett and Smith, because I have no idea.

The works was in Brown Street, but the family also had a shop in Bradshawgate where, naturally, among other things, their own cricket bats were sold (The shop was called Windetts, established in the early 1920s in premises which formerly housed the Horse and Groom public house. After it closed, it became a sports outfitters owned by Albert Ward)

Unfortunately, the works closed during the early part of the Second World War owing to labour difficulties and shortage of raw materials, and Bolton lost one of its lesser known but most interesting crafts.

An Evening News reporter wrote in 1952: "Not many of the original makers are still in existence now, owing to being forced out during the war, or swallowed up by one or other of the big combines in the sports equipment world, and the change of ownership, together with "improved" mechanical aids, has led to a mass production of bats that cuts out a lot of the old-time craftsmanship and individuality."

He was writing well after the firm had closed, but went on: "Once when I was in the Brown Street bat works, watching a bat develop, they let me into two secrets. You have noticed how the face of a new blade shines like silk? How would you think they imparted such a polish to a piece of willow?

The answer is it was done by the "boning" process, and that does not mean filleting a piece of wood. It means rubbing it with a bone, all by hand. And the bone used for the purpose was the jaw-bone of an ass! Today they employ other less primitive means, but they cannot improve upon the results obtained by the old craftsmen with the ass's jaw-bone.

"The other secret is this. Every true cricket bat is a "she", like a ship; but the bat has more claim to the title than the ship, because that is, in fact, the "sex" of a cricket bat. Only a certain special of English willow is suitable for the cricket blade, and only the female tree of the species has the essential grain.

"English willow still reigns supreme among all the trees of the world for bat making. That is why in the days of the Bolton firm bats made in Brown Street, Bolton, went to every part of the world where cricket was played.

"They have hit runs in fields thousands of miles from their birthplace and in thousands of big games; I can also safely add that so many Lancashire County men used them that thousands of Lancashire championship winning runs have flowed from Bolton bats."

So there you are, folks, the story of another old Bolton firm which didn't last the test of time (do you get that? Test, cricket? Oh, please yourselves!). But it was one which was obviously known throughout the world. The shop in Bradshawgate, incidentally, closed in 1982.

And if any of you players out there today happen to have a "Windett and Smith" bat handed down the family, I would take advice from someone who knows about cricket antiques. You never know, it might be worth a few score pounds ...