Surbiton Chess Club

History - background

To celebrate our 70th birthday we attempted to put together a short history of our club.

That proved to be somewhat of a challenge due to an almost complete lack of written archive records within the club and also the incomplete records in one of the leagues we compete in. So this is a work in progress and we hope we can add to it over time. In particular there is one mystery about our origins that we hope a keen archivist might one day help us resolve.

Much of what we have been able to find out is via the kind efforts of Martin Cath and our gratitude and appreciation for his help are hereby noted.

The present incarnation of Surbiton Chess Club was formed in 1949. Why use the words "present incarnation" you may ask? Well, Surrey County Chess Association (SCCA) records show that a Surbiton chess team won the Surrey Trophy in 1908-09 and the Beaumont Cup in 1905-06, 1906-07 and 1914-15. However, the Surrey Comet newspaper article dated 23rd September 1950, and linked to above, clearly states thatThe club was formed in February of last year, i.e. February 1949. There are also no records that have been unearthed thus far indicating any Surbiton Chess Club in existence between the two World Wars of 1914-18 and 1939-1945. Surrey records should have turned something up but did not. Thames Valley Chess League was not formed until 1947. We have two possible explanations, both of which are speculative:

1. The Surbiton Chess Club which existed until at least 1914-15 went out of existence as a result of the ravages of the First World War and a new chess club was not formed in Surbiton until 1949, after sufficient time had passed after the Second World War for normal life to have resumed.
2. Between the World Wars there was another chess club in our area, namely the Thames Valley Chess Club. In the 1927-28 season they were meeting in the Zeeta Cafe, Kingston Bridge, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, with a membership of nearly 60, including many of Surrey's leading players of that era. In 1931-32 they merged with Kingston Chess Club. Perhaps the pre-First World War Surbiton changed its name to Thames Valley Chess Club? Or did the former go out of existence because of the rise of the latter?

In either of the above cases, the current Surbiton Chess Club was born in February 1949 and so we celebrated our 70th birthday in 2019. If anyone can come up with more records to cast more light on this matter we would be most grateful. However we had our 70th birthday party regardless as we had bought the cake! A summary of other things the records (which are not complete) examined thus far show:

We have competed in both the Thames Valley and SCCA leagues, albeit with some gaps in our SCCA presence when it was too difficult to raise two (today we have eleven!) teams. More recently, in 2013-14, we also started to compete in the Four Nations Chess League (4NCL).

Other notable dates we know about include 1957, which is the year our current Treasurer, David Morant, joined the club. David left in 1963 and rejoined again in 1991. So David goes back the longest of any of us but with a 28 year gap. David has managed to come up with an old Treasurer's cash book ledger which has helped us to confirm venue and league affiliation from 1963 onwards, as well as providing an insight into numbers of members over the years. Amongst other things the ledger has a record of our club website first being set up in 2004.