1820 - 1834
By Bernard Hare
March 2022
March 2022
Leeds Chess Club was officially founded in 1834. It is no coincience, I suspect, that 1834 was the year a twenty-year-old John Rhodes joined the club. The fact that he "joined" the club implies that the club was already in existence to be joined, of course. The club's origins are shrouded in the mists of time. Before 1834, little is known, but it is evident that a proto-Leeds Chess Club was in operation as early as 1820 and probably before.
More about John Rhodes on the SILVER KING and AUSPICIOUS MEMBERS pages. Suffice to say that he and his sidekick Robert Cadman spent the next fifty years turning us from a gentleman's cigar-smoking, brandy-supping, avoid-the-wife type of club, with a little chess thrown in, into one of the most powerful and influential chess clubs in the nation, co-instigators and founder members of the Yorkshire Chess Association, Northern Counties Chess Union, and British Chess Federation. Smoky liesure establishments were opening all over the country in the eary-1800s, Simpson's Cigar Divan on the Strand in London being the most famous. For a membership fee of a guinea a year, or 1/6d a day, gentlemen could sit in comfort, drink a coffee - with perhaps a bracer to follow - read the paper, and pass the time with their friends. You and I, of course, are aware of the very best way in existence to pass the time with a friend. "Fancy a game, old bean?" |
Leeds's version of Simpson's Divan was the Grand Restaurant on Boar Lane. As a consequence of the Industrial Revolution, an affluent middle class had emerged in Leeds. They wouldn't really have taken chess seriously before the McDonnell v La Bourdonnais match of 1834, their equivalent of the "Fischer moment" which popularised the game. Before that, it might never have occured to them to declare themselves a chess club.
Who would they have played? The railways didn't arrive in Leeds until 1840, so even a match with Wakefield would have involved a major logistical operation, taking up a whole weekend and requiring a team of coach and horses with driver and guard. Wakefield would undoubtedly have laid on a lavish dinner after the match so that no one was going home that night. Accomodation would therefore be needed in a good local hostelry with a lavish breakfast next morning (probably with the Lord Mayor of Wakefield as a guest of honour). Even for affluent Georgians, it was starting to look expensive. Our first recorded match was therefore a correspondance consultation game with Liverpool in 1824/25. We beat them in 47 moves as black with an early Slav Defence (Bongcloud Variation). Click here to play through the game. |