Ecclesall Chess Club History
The original club history was provided by Peter Hempson. It was updated by Peter Willoughby and then more recently by Alan McIntosh. If you have any information to add, please let the secretary know. Extra information, or personal reminiscences, would be most welcome and appreciated by members.
History of Ecclesall Chess Club
Cliff Gibson invited former members of Hillsborough Chess Club and other players not attached to any chess club to form a new club which would meet at the Ecclesall Non-Political Club, in Ecclesall Road, Sheffield. The other players included Peter Ballard, Peter Hempson, David Lister and Jeremy Rudge. The meeting took place on September 11th 1974. About thirty people turned up, and it was decided to form a chess club and call it Ecclesall NPC Chess Club. A constitution was drafted and agreed, and five teams were entered in the Sheffield League. There were about forty members.
The room offered to the chess club was far larger than was needed for two eight board matches. The Ecclesall NPC realised after a while that it was not a great benefit to them to have their best room used exclusively for chess every Wednesday evening, and they started having other functions in the room simultaneously with the chess. Occasionally we had to use the bar for a match. Slot machines and a pool table were installed. After eight years the chess club committee decided that we should look for new premises. The 1982 AGM was not held at the Ecclesall NPC, but at the Lescar Hotel in Sharrow Vale Road. Members agreed to look for new premises and eventually found that the Robin Hood public house in Millhouses had an appropriate function room, which was available for us. We moved there and became the Ecclesall Chess Club, although in fact we had moved out of Ecclesall.
Before we moved, we had 38 members. Other strong players who had joined by this time included David Adams, Peter Dixon, Richard Hughes, Chris Marley and Paul Tilbrook. We still had five teams in the Sheffield League, but the E team had defaulted in a number of matches.
When we moved Ted Williams decided to form another club in the Ecclesall area, at Banner Cross, and he took five members with him, although he remained a member of Ecclesall himself. His new club changed venues a few times and became known as the Phoenix Chess Club, but it disbanded in 2015. Most of its members joined Stannington Chess Club, which later moved to Hillsborough and is now called Hillsborough Chess Club.
Twenty-seven former members came to the Robin Hood and we soon recruited another fifteen. Jack Wyld resigned as secretary and Norman Wragg agreed to take over. Harry Rayson was chairman of the club, a position he held from 1981 to 1996.
It should be mentioned that both Norman Wragg and Ted Williams, as blind players, represented the UK in the International Braille Chess Olympiads and Ted had won the British Championship for visually impaired players in 1975. Ted died in 1998 at the age of 83 and members of the club attended his funeral.
By 1984 the membership was down to thirty-three and it was felt that we could do with a few more members. By May 1986 we had thirty-seven.
Internal competitions were being run each year during the summer, but weren’t always getting completed. Some lightning tournaments were held, as they gave an immediate result, and the format of the club championship later changed to become a one-day Swiss competition so that it would be completed.
During the 1985/6 season a snooker table was installed in the playing room limiting the chess playing space to the extent that we could no longer have three home matches simultaneously.
At the 1986 AGM the secretary, Norman Wragg, resigned. Bill Pettigrew said that he would be retiring in the next year and would take over after that, so Peter Hempson agreed to do it for that one year. In that year Bill Pettigrew left the club, leaving Peter Hempson in the post, which he held until 2014 when Alan McIntosh took over.
In March 1987 the secretary had a meeting with the Robin Hood landlord, who said that the snooker table was staying but other furniture would be moved to make more space. At the 1987 AGM it was decided to hold future club championships in the form of a one-day quickplay tournament sometime in the winter, a format which continues today. It was also agreed that we should reduce the number of league teams to 4. We had three teams in the Richardson Cup. At this time, we had one team in division 1, two in division 3 and one in division 4.
During 1987 two members, Mike Smith and Dave Greensmith, left the club to form another club, Nomads. Their original idea was to be nomadic, moving from one pub to another. After that Ecclesall managed to keep four league teams going. The Nomads found it impractical to keep changing venues, but they did eventually become a formidable team.
In 1996 Norman Wragg took over as chairman from Harry Rayson.
In 2001 we were advised that the Robin Hood was to be closed for refurbishment and thereafter there would be no function room. A delegation visited the Norfolk Arms in Ringinglow and were told that we would be able to use their function room. Occasionally we had problems there, with others using the room. If we had just one team playing, we used their snooker room. We did give the manager a list of dates when we had two matches and he did keep the room free for us then. This situation lasted until 2004. In January we were advised that two brothers were taking over the Norfolk Arms and converting it into a restaurant in the summer. On 18th May the secretary visited the Abbey (public house on Chesterfield Road) to see if we could move there. They were agreeable to us using it on Wednesdays. A chess club committee meeting was held at the Norfolk Arms the next day and it was unanimously agreed that we should move to the Abbey.
The new venue was spacious, with room for twenty tables, and was even suitable for Sheffield Chess Association events. We still had four league teams, one in each division, and three Richardson Cup teams. The membership was just under thirty.
In 2005 a new landlord took over at the Abbey. He wasn’t particularly cooperative with the chess club and fortunately he left in April 2007 and the former owners returned. In April 2012 the Abbey changed hands again, and the new owners were also very cooperative with the chess club.
During the 2008/9 season a snooker table was installed in the playing room. That left plenty of room for a single match but it was a bit cramped for a first team match (8 boards) plus a six-board match.
During 2015 the club relocated to the Dore and Totley Golf Club and photos of the club in action at this venue can be seen in the photos section. It was a prestigious venue but, any golfing events they had took precedence over chess matches and as the venue was not getting many customers at night, they started cutting staff hours and closing early. In 2019 we had to move, at quite short notice, and found that we could move back to the Abbey, which was now minus its snooker table.
The number of Ecclesall teams playing in the Sheffield League was five from 1976 to 1987, four from 1987 to 2001, three from 2001 to 2003, four from 2003 to 2011, three in 2011/12 and four again in 2012/13 then five in 2015.
The A team have been in division 1 ever since the club was formed. They did win the league championship in the years 1976, 1982, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 2000 and were runners-up in 1984, 1986, 1997 and 1998. In 2004 they were involved in a three-way play-off to avoid relegation. Credit for their success must go to Mick Burrell who was their captain from 1991 to 2005, when he left the area. A revival followed James Marley's captaincy with Ecclesall finishing division 1 runners up in 2015 then coming third in 2016. In addition, he took them to the Champions Challenge where against the best in Yorkshire they finished a creditable fourth. The A team have also played in the National Club Championships, between 1974 and 1978, but with little success coming up against strong teams from Liverpool and Manchester. In 2018 Alan McIntosh became A team captain and, building on the good work done by James, the A team won the division 1 title and retained it the following year. In 2022 Alan took over the B team captaincy and James once again became A team captain.
The B team were in division 1 from 1974 to 1979 and again from 1982 to 1986, otherwise they have been in divisions 2 or 3 since.
The C team have been in division 3 most of the time, with occasional spells in divisions 2 and 4.
The D team have always been in division 4 or 5 and the E team have always in the bottom division.
The club usually enters two teams in the Richardson Cup. The first team won the cup in 1981, 1995, 1996 and 2019 and were losing finalists in 1992, 2002 and 2015. In 2013 after being knocked out in the first round, they entered the Plate competition and went on to win that title.
In the spring of 2020 Covid hit and the country was soon in a number of 'lockdowns'. The leagues were halted, then concluded, using average points to decide positions. The Richardson Cup had been completed with Ecclesall as winners, meaning that James would at last get his hands on a trophy. The Sheffield and District Chess Association set up some online competitions which Ecclesall took part in but, as not many of our members were keen to play online, we had little success. It did however attract a few new members to the club. When things started getting back to ‘normal’ and the chess club was up and running again, many members were still unwilling to return. The secretary and a small band of new and old members kept things 'ticking over' however, and a few friendly matches were organised.
In 2022, summer leagues were reintroduced and although we only had 15 playing members, we ran three (4 to 6 board) teams. The A team, missing some key members, struggled in division 1. The B team won the third division and the C team were runners up in division 4. Come the winter a few more members returned and we entered three teams in the winter leagues. We currently are only approaching 20 playing members, but hopefully the situation will continue to improve and we can get back up to having four or even five teams.