Peak District inn in Grindleford holds memorabilia from Bradman and touring Australian sides
In Grindleford on a Peak District hillside, The Maynard hotel preserves memorabilia and stories left by touring Australian cricket teams who stayed there during England tours in 1930, 1938 and 1948. The building, formerly the Maynard Arms, contains photographs, autographs and named rooms that recall those visits.
The approach by train to Grindleford features homemade bunting on the platform celebrating books about trains in the national year of reading, and early morning rain has dampened the turning leaves on the slopes of Padley Gorge. Five minutes along Station Road, past the Station Café known for its huge mugs of tea, sits The Maynard, which hosted international touring teams when they played Derbyshire and Yorkshire.
A snug behind the reception and bar holds a small display of bats, autographs and black-and-white team photographs; a caption states the Australians first stayed there in 1930 to escape the industrial noise of Sheffield. In one front-row portrait a 21-year-old Don Bradman sits in his blazer; that 1930 summer included his 334 at Headingley, 1,000 runs by the end of May and 974 runs in the Ashes series.
Australia returned to Grindleford in 1938 and stayed for 10 days, from 28 June to 7 July, before playing Derbyshire at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield, and Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, when rain denied the hosts victory. “Tremendous furnaces paint the night sky with rosy brilliance for many square miles on the northern and eastern sides of Sheffield,” writes “Easel” in the Maitland Mercury on 21 July that year, “but when the train emerges at Grindleford from the long tunnel, it enters a haven of rest where nothing but beauty meets the eye and greets the senses, ideal conditions for the Australian team to return to after their strenuous days of cricket.”
Anecdotes from touring parties survive in contemporary reports: the Albany Advertiser recounted that Lindsay Hassett smuggled a goat into Stan McCabe’s room, writing, “The goat, with a goat’s extraordinary taste in food, reduced McCabe’s bedroom to a remarkable condition, much to the delight of that rascal Hassett.” Jack Fingleton recorded a related episode in Cricket Crisis: “The next night everybody locked their doors, which was just as well because Hassett found a hedgehog.”
The hotel has named 15 rooms after players from those tours, including the (Chuck) Fleetwood-Smith, the (Ben) Barnett, the Fingleton and the (Jack) Badcock. The bridal suite carries Don Bradman’s name and his “nearly perfect average,” and other rooms honour Hugh Tayfield, Percy Mansell, George Fullerton and Syd Pegler, who were members and manager of the South African side of 1951.
Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles also stayed at The Maynard; that team completed an England tour without losing a game, drawing with Yorkshire and defeating Derbyshire by an innings, and were said to have bathed in the River Derwent. The Rev Keith Bamford, speaking as part of a Derbyshire Cricket Foundation heritage project, recalled: “Keith Miller was there in 1948 and apparently spent a little too long in the bar one night and missed the bus to Sheffield. A journalist there lent him £10 for a taxi, didn’t see any repayment for years and years, and many years later in Melbourne he was sitting watching the Test. Miller tapped him on the shoulder and gave him some money and said that’s for Grindleford.” Basil Easterbrook, writing in the Sunday Sun on 17 June 1973, offered a corroborating anecdote about a separate episode in 1953 when players almost missed a start: “At 11am, Australia’s two great opening bowlers were peeling off their pyjamas at the Maynard Arms, while several miles away they were just closing the gates on 30,000 Yorkshiremen waiting for battle to recommence at 11.30. “Hire a car Bas,” shouted Miller, as he and Lindwall fell about the bedroom trying to climb into their trousers. I got a Rolls-Royce from the local undertaker – the only vehicle available – and the three of us drove in some state up to the edge of the moors and then down the rim of the saucer that is Sheffield. We pulled up outside Bramall Lane at 11.28.” In another telling Easterbrook writes that he was later repaid by Ray Lindwall, “older, heavier, greying of hair, but the smile and the eyes the same,” who pushed a fiver into his jacket pocket.
Local historian Alan Jacques, born above the village shop in 1951, recalled collecting autographs at The Maynard from the 1965 South Africans, “the last side to tour before isolation,” and taking some players down to the riverside when they asked for walking tips. Jacques also retains a 1963 autograph book containing signatures from visiting West Indians Lance Gibbs, Alf Valentine, Seymour Nurse and Derek Murray.
The account notes that modern touring parties tend to stay in larger city hotels but that The Maynard still receives locals and the village cricket club for drinks and events. Ian Johnson wrote for the Adelaide New in 1953: “It’s a very comfortable country pub on the side of a very lovely valley which allows the players a perfect rest.”
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