News and Forthcoming Events

In September, post-London2012, while I was preparing for a talk on Born Out of Wenlock, a story came to light that intones well with Andy Murray's Wimbledon Championship victory, with the current debate about the legacy of London2012, and hopes for what Murray's win might mean for tennis in Britain.

Frederick C Wilding (1853-1945) of Hereford was listed in the Wenlock Olympian Society’s Roll of the Victors as having participated at Wenlock Olympian Games in 1873, and in the National Olympian Games held at Much Wenlock in 1874 and in Shrewsbury in 1877 (about twenty years before the IOC Olympics began).  

The 1871 census revealed Wilding to be an articled clerk, aged 18, living at 17 Widemarsh Street, Hereford, the home of an uncle on his mother’s side.  He was a native of Montgomery, over the Welsh border from Shropshire. Wilding's father was, like William Penny Brookes of Much Wenlock (the founder of the Olympian Games that helped inspire the modern Olympics) the town’s surgeon apothecary.

Wilding's Olympian Record

Frederick Wilding was an all-round athlete (strength being something that Murray has worked on in recent years).  In the 1873 Wenlock Games Wilding was second in the Pentathlon, then called the ‘General Competition’.  This comprised long jump, high jump, putting the shot, a half-mile foot race and climbing a rope (initially 55’ then increased to 75’).  

In 1874 a National Olympian Games was staged at Much Wenlock.  Wilding again came second in the Pentathlon. He competed besides in the individual events of long jump, which he won with a 19’5” leap, and  shot put in which he came second (20’ 7 1/2”).

Wilding returned to compete for the last time at the National Olympian Games of 1877, held in Shrewsbury.  He came second in the shot put (‘putting the weight’): his, presumably right+left hand throws totalled 34’ 3”.

Emigration

In 1879 Frederick Wilding married Julia Anthony in Hereford.  Later the same year the newly-weds emigrated to New Zealand.  Wilding became a lawyer in Christ Church.  (The family home was called Fownhope, after a Herefordshire village.)  The following year they had their first son, Frederick Archibald, who died soon afterwards.  They went on to have two daughters and three more sons, the eldest of whom was (Frederick) Anthony Wilding, born on 31^st October 1883.  Frederick Wilding evidently inspired his son with a love of sport, and also passed on generous measures of his ability.

Tony Wilding, Wimbledon Champion

In an example of Wenlock’s extended legacy, Anthony (Tony) Wilding went on to become New Zealand’s greatest tennis player and a poster-boy of the international circuit.  Tony Wilding played Davis Cup tennis for Australasia from 1905, helping the team to three consecutive victories 1907-1909 (over Britain, and the USA twice).  He won the Australian Open in 1906 and 1909.  He was Wimbledon Champion four times straight 1910-1913, narrowly losing in 1914 to his doubles partner that year, Norman Brookes. Four Wimbledon men’s doubles titles were also his between 1907 and 1914.

A century ago, Tony Wilding was the World No 1 player. In 1913 he won all three of the majors of the day: the World Hard Court Championship (in Paris, on clay); the World Lawn Tennis Championship (at Wimbledon on grass); and the World Covered Court Championship (Stockholm, indoor wood).  In 1912, at the Stockholm Olympics he had taken a bronze medal in the men’s singles. 

War

Almost three years to the day after he was knocked out of the 1912 Stockholm Games in the semi-final, Tony Wilding, then 31 years old, was killed in the First World War, on the Western Front near Neuve-Chapelle, when a shell landed near his dug-out.  The principal tennis venue in Christ Church, New Zealand is named Wilding Park in his memory.  His sister, Cora founded New Zealand’s Youth Hostel Association.

Tony's father Frederick, ‘FC’ as he was known, had been educated at Hereford Cathedral School in whose library we sat for the talk last September.  Indeed, a Wilding, though not FC (probably his older brother) had held the school’s long-jump record of 20’ 6” for at least a century from the 1860s.

Legacy

The Wildings’ story, connecting as it does William Penny Brookes’s Olympian Games in which Frederick Wilding participated, with Coubertin’s IOC Olympics in which Tony Wilding won bronze, demonstrates yet again how Brookes’s legacy, until recently largely unknown and unacknowledged, has quietly threaded itself around the World.  Murray's London2012 gold medal and Wimbledon 2013 title echo Tony Wilding's achievements.

Given Murray's nationality, it seems appropriate to note, among Tony Wilding’s list of worldwide tennis victories, the 1904 Scottish Championships, played at Moffat.

In establishing his Wenlock and later National Olympian Games, William Penny Brookes showed many of the characteristics so memorably on display and applauded last summer in London – dogged determination, remarkable perseverance and, in the Games Makers, public-spirited self-sacrifice to a bigger cause. Few did more than Brookes to press for physical education, particularly gymnastics, to be on the timetable of every school in Britain (poignant to note in the context of Dunblane).

Brookes would be delighted to note the part played by his Games in the Wildings’ story, but not a bit surprised that it should have taken them from Wenlock to Wimbledon via New Zealand. When others tried to pour scorn on Brookes’s ambition to bring the benefits of sport to all through his Olympian Games founded in remote Shropshire, he met their doubts with a prophetic metaphor:

‘Sow a single seed of a rare plant in the most secluded spot and if the soil and other conditions are favourable to its germination, it will grow up and bear other seed, and, in time, produce plants sufficient to cover the length and breadth of the land.’ 

Murray like Brookes, has demonstrated remarkable determination and perseverance.  He has certainly shouldered the greater cause of a long-sought British win in the Mens' Championship at Wimbledon with a good grace, and perhaps privately, the determination to rehabilitate Dunblane in the national psyche.  Dunblane might seem a very 'secluded spot' for a Wimbledon champion to have taken root, but then who would have thought that the modern Olympics could have been inspired by the Games of a Shropshire market town?  In the week of Murray's win, as Wenlock hosts its 127th annual Olympian Games, it is to be hoped that Murray's success at Wimbledon in 2013 might seed future tennis winners, and that in time we might see British tennis flourish across the length and breadth of the land.

WANTED - careful gardeners.

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Compiled from: the records of the Wenlock Olympian Society, the Ancestry Tree of mhurrell143, census information on Ancestry.com, http://www.anthonywilding.com/ and Wikipedia.