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to Phoenix Chess Club Home Page (Sheffield )
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Sheffield & District
Chess Association
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about Sheffield & South Yorkshire
The Author’s home page
History of
the Phoenix Chess Club.
We play
friendly chess every Thursday at 7.30 at the
Highcliffe Hotel,
We welcome chess players of all levels whether beginners or experienced players;
we have three teams in the Sheffield Chess League.
We
have two teams in the 2nd
Division & a team in the 3rd Division.
We
are open all year round & run a Summer Tournament when the league matches
are completed!
For further
details contact John Mercy on 0114-268 3803 or email
THE HISTORY OF
In 1981 Ecclesall Chess Club
played at the Ecclesall Non-Political Club on
The first requirement was
suitable premises and after visiting a lot of public houses Ted Williams was
offered the use of an upstairs room at the Banner Cross Hotel. John Borrill
then set about recruiting members for the new club, by contacting chess players
of which he knew or became aware , who did not currently belong to any club.
(Despite this policy, a lot of resentment was created at the Ecclesall club
over the formation of the new club.) John was very persuasive and did not
easily take no for an answer, and as a result most of those approached agreed
to join. Accordingly, in the summer of 1982 he called a meeting of prospective
new members at the Banner Cross Hotel to discuss arrangements. Among those
present at the meeting, in addition to John, were Ted Williams, Gil Bowling,
John Gallagher (another blind player), Gary Burkinshaw, Pete Cassinelli, Barry
Balderson and Mike Brumby.
It was decided to call the
club Banner Cross Chess Club, play on a Monday evening and enter two teams in
the fourth division of the
Finance was an early problem
with the need to acquire chess sets, boards and clocks, and pay the rent of £1
a week and league entry fees. Accordingly the initial annual subscription was
set at £16, a high amount at that time, and in addition Barry Balderson, an
estate agent, agreed to loan the club £50. Because of the initial expenditure,
for some years afterwards an entry fee was charged to new members. Another
problem was the room, which had not been used for many years and contained
dusty junk. It had at one time been used as a snooker room and Joe Davies was
supposed to have played there in the 1930’s. So the first task for the new
members was to clear out the junk and clean up the room. In hind sight in view
of this work, it seems unreasonable for the landlord to have charged a full
rent from the beginning.
Over the next two years the club grew rapidly
as new members were recruited by John, and the club gained a number of members
from the YMCA Chess Club, which went out of existence. This was because the
YMCA proposed to charge the club a commercial rent for the use of a room, as
though they were an unconnected organisation. Among those members gained at
that time were Phil Beckett and Ray Guest. In the 1983-84 season a third team
was entered in the league, called Spartans and both
In the 1984-85 season a
fourth team was entered, which was called
Friends, because it was intended for players who did not wish to take
the game too seriously, and once more two teams were promoted – Phoenix to Division
1 and Spartans to Division 3. Towards the end of that season, when it looked as
though
At the end of that season
John Borrill stood down as first team captain and persuaded Mike Brumby to take
over, whilst he took over as captain of Spartans, at that time regarded as the
third team. Under John Borrill, however, Spartans quickly became the second
strongest team. During the course of the 1985-86 season, Chris Shepard introduced another strong player to the club,
Paul Raynes and, partly as a result, that season was the most successful season
for the club, with Spartans winning Division 3 and the Batley- Meek trophy,
whilst Phoenix won Division 1 and the Davy trophy. However, it was during this
season that the landlord of the Banner Cross Hotel decided to install once
again a billiard table in the room used by the chess club. Although no one was
allowed to use the table on club evenings, it was very inconvenient having to
play round it. Accordingly after the end of the season the club moved to the
White Lion at Heeley, and changed its name to the White Lion Chess Club.
The landlord of the White
Lion was a chess player and keen to have the club, without charging rent. The club was to play in the
main bar, from which the public were to be excluded for that evening. Although
some members of the committee had doubts about this arrangement, which involved
the club also changing its club night to Thursday, nonetheless it was decided
to move there. However, after the first club evening the landlord, on the
urging of his fiancée, realised that this arrangement was not practicable. The
club was moved to two adjacent upstairs rooms, and rent of £1 a week was paid
in the winter months, as a contribution to heating costs. Although playing in
two rooms was a little inconvenient, it had one advantage: one or two matches
could be played in one room, while friendly games were played in the other
without disturbing the match players.
Unfortunately, after playing
for the club for two seasons Chris Shepard was persuaded by his boss at the
Midland Bank, Mike Smith, to move to a new club then being formed, namely
Nomads. (So named, because the intention was to move venues regularly, which
intention was never realised even in the early days, the club only moving when
it had to like others.) Paul Raynes turned out to be a transient, moving away
and back again several times before finally disappearing for good. About
1998-99 Alan Potts, another strong player moved to the area and was recruited
by the club. Again however after a couple of years he was poached by another
club – this time Woodseats, then called Batemore and Jordanthorpe.
The fiancée of the landlord
at the White Lion, who had become his wife, continued to be antagonistic to the
chess club and after two years started allowing her cats to use one of the
rooms as a lavatory! The smell was awful and, as apparently intended, drove the
club to seek another venue. A suitable room was found at the Earl of Arundel
and
In the early days of the
club, two junior players, Nick Funnell and Carl Walker, joined the club and
progressed rapidly. Nick reached the summit of his achievements, when he was runner-up at the British Under-15 Championship at the age of 14.
However, he did not seem to make any further progress from that point, whilst
Carl continued to progress and eventually became the stronger player. Nick was
lost to the club when he went off to University, but Carl has played for the
club ever since. At the beginning of the 1986-87 season, the Southey Chess Club
had gone out of existence and the two remaining members, Gerry Fletcher and his
son, Paul, who was also a junior at the time, joined the Earl of Arundel club
and have continued to be members of the club ever since. Paul progressed
steadily and he and Carl have shared boards 1 and 2 for
An early decision was made to
play throughout the year, unlike many clubs. In the summer months, friendly
games were played and soon a series of light-hearted summer tournaments was
established, such as 5 Minute, 15 Minute, Chess Problems, Set Openings and Set
Endings. To these were later added Progressive Chess, Losing Chess and
Quicksand. The latter was invented by John Borrill and used egg timers of the
hour glass type. Whilst a player was thinking the sand would run from his end
of the timer to the other. Then when he moved, he would turn over the timer so
that the sand ran the other way. If a player ran out of sand he automatically
lost, just as he would if his flag fell in a 5 minute game. The sand typically
ran for between 2½ and 3 minutes, but there was no theoretical limit to the
length of each game.
After a few years Mike Brumby
introduced Kriegspiel to the club. This was popular with some members, but
disliked by others and so was not included in the summer programme. A group of
four or five members were enthusiasts and became very proficient in it.
However, the more proficient they became the less enjoyable the games became
for the players, until the person getting the most enjoyment was the umpire. At
this point playing Kriegspiel gradually ceased.
About 1990 John Borrill
suddenly reduced his involvement with the club for personal reasons, ceasing to
be Secretary and Spartans Captain and sadly he died in early 1992. Ron Keenan
took over as Club Secretary and Patrick Broadhead as Spartans Captain.
Meanwhile, first Adrian Millward and then John Toscano had become
In 1993-94 a fifth division
of the league was instituted and the club entered a fifth team called Vikings,
which went on to win the P H Charles Trophy and promotion in their first year.
They continued in this vein coming second in Division 4 in 1994-95, and gaining
promotion to Division 3. However, Vikings finished bottom of Division 3 in
1995-96 and were withdrawn from the league all together the following year,
because of falling club membership.
Ron Keenan gave up as
Secretary in 1995 and was succeeded first by
During 2001-02, the brewery
sold the Earl of Arundel and
Clearly, the club had to find a new venue and, after
searching round, moved to a rather dismal room at the rundown Royal Hotel.
However, the landlord was welcoming and charged no rent. Unfortunately, after a
year or so it was closed down and converted into apartments. This necessitated
another change of venue to the Cricketers Inn, where the landlord was the same
person as the original landlord at the Earl of Arundel, and again he was
welcoming. Unfortunately the premises proved unsuitable and after one season
there the club moved again – this time to the Bridge Inn at Heeley, where it
still plays at the present time.
On leaving the Earl of
Arundel, the club changed its name to
Many thanks to Mike Brumby
for providing this extensive Club history. If any members past or present have
anything to add please email me.
Updated
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
