W Geoffrey was born in 1811 at Hartshead. He was the
illegitimate result of a Sunday afternoon spent by his
parents house hunting in Thornton.
A sickly child, Geoffrey nevertheless showed great prowess at sport, despite contracting gangrene in his leg after standing on a rusty nail, and having to have the leg amputated when he was four. However he continued to play snooker and hand-ball with great skill until his left arm was crushed by a falling gravestone while he was playing in Haworth Churchyard at the age of seven. He was then confined to the Parsonage until he was fitted with an artificial leg in 1825 when he was fourteen. He once more became an active sportsman, taking up fell running and rugby. In 1827 he devised a game involving a wooden club, three drainpipes and an iron cannonball, which was called grasshopper, after his childhood nickname.We now know this to have been the earliest form of cricket as we know it.
In 1831, he founded a club to play his game, and it was called the Bronte Ball Club. In 1832, this was changed to the Methodist Cannonball Club, which was evolved over the years into the MCC as we know it today. The clubhouse and playing field were situated on the very summit of Penistone Hill, just above Haworth. Although the site is now unrecognizable, being completely overgrown, part of one of the concrete pillars of the clubhouse can still be seen, sticking up above the encroaching heather.
Many happy hours were spent by W. Geoffrey Bronte and his companions, high on the wild moors, playing in all weathers. Often, however, squabbles would break out amongst the group. These always seemed to occur when W. Geoffrey was at the crease. He used to remove his artificial leg to bat, and claiming tiredness, rested the stump of his missing leg on the bails, making his dismissal an almost impossible task. (This is why the wooden uprights at each end of a cricket pitch are called "stumps'.)
In 1843, he moved to Leeds and began work on his great dream at Headingley. This playing field was going to be the best grasshopper pitch in all of England. He threw himself into the task with great enthusiasm, but sadly, overwork took its toll, and he never lived to see his dream become reality, dying of smallpox, yellow jaundice and tuberculosis simultaneously in 1846.
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A protector of the type typically in use by contemporaries to dissuade the unwelcome attentions of the many exotic, tropical and un Christian wildlife entering the country at this time imported from every corner of the glorious empire.
Ball and Bootlace.