Life in 1950s Marlow Part One Sport and Leisure

Written and researched by Charlotte Day.

Sport

Marlow of course is well known for its water sports and summertime regatta. Geoffrey Baker and Michael Spracklen of Marlow not only competed in but won the double skulls gold in the British Empire and Commonwealth Games of 1958. Michael went on to become one of the world's foremost rowing coaches.

On dry land football, cricket, darts, lawn bowls, hockey and lawn tennis continued to be popular. The Rugby Football Club was formed in 1948 but were yet to secure their own premises in the 1950s. For most of this decade they used the Sports Club facilities as they were officially a section of that club but unhappiness with the quality of the pitch they were able to use saw the rugby players eventually leave there. We have seen passing mention of a Rugby team called the Marlow Swans during the 1950s. We are uncertain if this was a nickname for the main Rugby Club team or a second, since lost, rugby side in Marlow.

There were at very least around a 100 racing pigeons in the town in the late 1950s belonging to members of the Marlow and District Racing Pigeon Club. The club existed earlier and later than this but probably had never been more popular than in the 1950s. 

The boys at Borlase School apparently loved basketball. They played in an inter-Borlase league between themselves. This might imply that the sport was not generally so popular as there doesn't seem to be any matches organised with other schools. Borlase basketball club started in 1957, soon after the school had also formed a badminton one. There was no longer a football team at the school, it having been ditched in favour of rugby some years previously, to apparently warm parental approval. This move however sparked criticism from those connected with Marlow F.C who felt they had been cut off from a vital source of future players.

Bisham Abbey Sports Centre across the river was managed by the Central Council For Physical Education. It had a mission to provide residential and non-residential training courses for youth leaders, teachers, young people themselves, budding professional sportspeople, and members of the public in general in the fields of sports, fitness and outdoor recreation. Peak time for the Abbey was the summer when visitors (sometimes whole sports clubs) arrived from all over the country to spend their holidays as residential pupils there. Activities included camping, sailing, canoeing, gymnastics, athletics, netball, tennis and judo. The Bucks County Tennis Championships were held at the Abbey at least once in the 1950s, as were local fencing competitions. Weekly fencing lessons were offered to Marlow people at the centre by 1950 as we're ballroom dancing ones as this activity while not seen as a sport, was recognised as good physical exercise.

Billiards was for a very long time a craze in Marlow. Not to call our Marlow predecessors heathens but the main reason many people visited the Literary and Scientific Institute was to make use of it's billiards table or enter the billiards competitions held there rather than read books or hear lectures. This was the case for decades. Eventually even the income from the billiards tables, and the newer craze for snooker, couldn't keep the Institute going and it folded in 1958. The library now occupies that building.

An Amateur Boxing Club for schoolboys (10 wasn't seen as too young) and adults met at the Drill Hall in Institute Road for training and it's members of all ages had some success in local competitions.

Marlow had a Motor Cycling Club in 1953 which organised road races.

Nellie Creswell

Ellen Creswell, known as Nellie, was one of the Marlow ladies who pioneered cycling in the town for female riders and competitive rowing for local women too.

Born in 1867 to Eliza and Henry Creswell, Nellie spent her early years in the Cross Keys pub in the town as her father was the landlord there. He retired in her late childhood and the family eventually moved to a house called The Ferns in Glade Road. This is still there (number 17) but does not bear the name. Not to be confused with The Ferns, Little Marlow.

She not only served as one of the committee members of the Cycling club, the only known Victorian woman to do so in Marlow, but became the club's Vice Captain. She helped organise and competed in club competitions which tested speed or agility on a bicycle, not infrequently beating all of the men in mixed events. She did it in long skirts too. While a few women in England cycled in pantaloons or rational dress at that time Nellie made it clear she did not support club membership for women that dressed that way (or for men with unconventional cycling dress).

The Marlow club went out on group rides but Nellie pedalled off on her own out of town too, something which many female cyclists did not yet feel comfortable doing in the Victorian age. Nellie was fined 10 shillings by the Henley Magistrates for riding on the footpath on one such trip in 1898 [Henley Advertiser 5th March 1898].

Nellie also, by 1892, was rowing for Marlow at the Regatta in the women's team events.

There was a strong sporting tradition in the Marlow Creswell family. Her uncle Augustus was one of the best local male rowers and her brother George played for Marlow F.C. in it's early days as well as the more famous Everton. George's premature death by way of blood poisoning in 1904 devastated the Creswell family. Nellie had acted as bridesmaid at his wedding to Catherine (Kate) Chamberlain of Bisham.

Nellie herself did not marry but remained living in her parental home in Glade Road with her parents and then after their deaths on her own. She is buried with her parents in All Saints churchyard in Marlow. Her date of death is indecipherable but from other sources we know it was no earlier than 1928.

The son of her brother George, also called George, died in the First World War. Nellie apparently was the beneficiary of his estate. He had lived with her at The Ferns, Glade Road for most of his life. I am uncertain what happened to his mother Catherine after she became a widow.

At All Saints can be found this grave of Nellie (Ellen) and her parents - "In loving memory of my dear parents - Eliza Ann Creswell d Jan 25 1903 aged 73 and Henry Creswell d. June 9th 1913 age 79 years. [Henry was the son of George and Charlotte Creswell of The Swan and would later run The Cross Keys for a few years himself]

Rear of the grave: Also Ellen Creswell (Nellie). Inscription currently obscured by greenery. 

All mentions of any person on this blog can be found under the Person Index. There are plenty of Creswell / Cresswells! More posts about people of Glade Road or any other street can be found indexed here. More grave photos and transcriptions indexed here. 

You can find out more about the early history of cycling in the town in Kathryn's post here

Other posts you might like: "Groundbreaking women in Marlow History" here.

Researched and written by Charlotte Day with additional research by Kathryn Day.

©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to use this research for family or local history purposes with credit to this blog and a link here.

Cupper Family of Fair View Glade Road

 

Updated June 2025

I have always thought Fair View House in Glade Road Marlow to be so lovely with all the decorative metalwork so I decided to look into some of the house's former occupiers.

My attention was caught by the Cupper  family so here's a little portrait of them:

Arthur and Eliza Cupper moved to Marlow circa 1890. They were in Glade Road on the 1891 census and in the 1891 Marlow Directory and Almanack though not in Fair View. Arthur was a domestic coachman, just as he had been for years in London before that on the census but when the Directory was published he was listed as a boarding house keeper.

He and his wife married at St Margaret's Westminster in 1869. Arthur was originally from Bramfield, Suffolk [born 1840 to William and Harriet] while Eliza was a London born girl from a family of Sussex origin [nee Hoadley born circa 1850 St George Hanover Square Parish, London to parents John and Mary Ann]. Eliza's father was a footman which made me wonder if he and Eliza's future husband had worked together in a large house.

All the couple's children except their youngest Maud, seem to have been born in Paddington or Marylebone in London. Maud was Marlow born.

By 1895 Eliza was managing Rye Peck House by the river as a private residential hotel (short term apartments with luncheon and tea included). It had been recently converted from a house. The South Bucks Standard was very impressed by the conversion saying that Rye Peck deserved to "become immediately popular amongst those who in search of relaxation and health, estimate cleanliness and comfort at their true value. The house which is excellently fitted up is cosy and well furnished and admirably suited to its purpose" .

Nevertheless this private hotel didn't seem to last long and Eliza turned to running a domestic service registry, that is an employment agency for servants, from the High Street where the family also lived for a time. Business must have gone well or Eliza was simply generous of nature as she was a frequent donor of funds to Marlow Cottage Hospital.

Arthur died in 1907 and by the early 1910s Eliza had moved the family back to Glade Road and into Fair View* and was running her agency from there. She supplied cooks, parlour maids, nurse maids, whatever you needed short or long term.

Her sons Edgar and Henry both attended Borlase grammar school in West Street. Henry was admitted on a scholarship in 1909, I am unsure about Edgar. Both played football for the school as Old Borlasians. Both were also competitive rowers in local competitions. Their sister Maud herself was a medal winning rower as an 18 year old at Marlow Regatta in 1913.

Henry and Edgar both served in World War One. Henry was mentioned in despatches in 1916 as a second Lieutenant in the Oxon and Bucks Light Infantry. As a civilian he worked in the USA and Canada as an executive of an automobile company and married an American woman. He returned to England by 1921 with his family and settled in Glade Road, but not in Fair View.

Edgar suffered a twice fractured leg from a German grenade thrown into his trench during his military service. He was then in the 7th battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment. It is said on a number of websites that while he was away fighting Edgar's wife bigamously married someone else and that he himself also committed bigamy. These websites are sites concerned with filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock as Edgar's wife's second marriage was to a man who wrote screenplays for Hitchcock. I have not researched this issue myself at all. His marriages were not to local women. 

By the way there was by sheer coincidence a man in Victorian Marlow named Alfred Hitchcock but he was a gardener!

*A previous resident at Fair View /Fairview was the elderly and very religious Caroline Patrickson, a lady of private means. She moved to Effra in Beaumont Rise sometime between 1904 and 1907 and had also lived elsewhere in Glade Road. While at Fair View Caroline lived with a paid companion and a maid. She died in 1924 aged 88. I'm her will she left bequests to the two servants she had then (different from her ones who served her at Fair View), Ms Wilmott her companion and Jane Day her maidservant.

Researched and written by Charlotte Day.

Several other houses in Glade Road have histories on this blog describing who lived there. To find them see this index

Sources:

1907 and 1915 editions of the Marlow Directory and Almanack.

GRO Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes online.

Census 1841, 51, 61,71, 81,91 transcribed by me from microfilm.

1911 census via Find My Past.

Bramfield, Suffolk and St Margaret's Westminster parish registers. Thanks to Jane Pullinger for accessing the latter in person for me.

South Bucks Standard 21st August 1913. Copy held at the British Library Archives and accessed by me March 2021 via the BNA.

Bucks Herald 25th December 1915, as above.

South Bucks Standard 5 November 1909, as above.

Reading Mercury 15th January 1916, as above.

Bucks Free Press March 21st 1924. Bucks Free Press Archives.

Photo by Kathryn. Taken March 2021.

©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to use this research or image for family or local history purposes if you credit this blog and link here so that the sources listed above remain credited for the information they provided.