Greatest Moment

Winning the Central League 'Double' in 2000.

Local Hero

Matthew Wood, Yorkshire batsman, who learnt his cricket at Emley.

Bizarre Fact

In the late 19th Century Emley CC was known as 'Elmley CC'.

Isolated and Charming

Emley is an archetypal West Yorkshire village: high, isolated, but also attractive and charming. It is situated six miles south-east of Huddersfield, close to Flockton, Clayton West, Skelmanthorpe, Shelley and Kirkburton - so this is very much cricket country. It also has a long history. As Rev. Robert Pym wrote: 'Emley has been an old-fashioned place, For it was built in ancient days.'

The place is famous for one landmark: Emley Moor Television Mast. A local poem talks about the 'shadow of the mast', and this is ever-present. The telecommunications facility - which beams signals into over five million homes - is visible from most vantage points in Kirklees.

It is ultra-tall (900 feet, with a 180-foot aerial on top) and ultra-thin, but even so it has a certain grace and poise (unlike its predecessor, which collapsed in 1969). It is built on the 750-foot contour so the top is roughly 1,834 feet above sea level, which makes it Europe's tallest free-standing structure. The poem quoted above also describes the Mast as 'a welcoming beacon'.

Emley Mast is also a symbol. When the village's all-conquering football team reached the latter stages of the FA Cup in the mid-1990s, and earned a mouth-watering away tie with West Ham United, all those who went down to London to support the team seemed to carry with them a portable model of the Mast.

Tents and Non-Coms

Upper Lane is not far away from St. Michael's church (whose tower is visible from the ground), the post office, the pub and Market Cross, the starting point for the 'Boundary Walk', a longstanding Emley tradition.

In the early years, the cricket club and the football club both played in the same field in Upper Lane (as they would also do later on). But the soccer players moved to a ground near Chapel House farm - leaving the cricketers in sole possession - and went on to play at several other fields before ending up at the Welfare Ground.

In 1906 the local coal merchant, George Stringer Snr. (an ex-Emley cricketer himself), opened a new pavilion at Upper Lane. This was good news for the cricket club, who up to this point had had to rely on a simple wooden hut known as 'The Tent'. We are told that in 1909 the Emley soccer XI contained 10 miners from the Park Mill and Emley Moor collieries, so it would not be surprising if the cricket club also attracted its share of miners.

At the start of the twentieth century, there is also evidence of another cricket club in Emley - 'The Noncoms', a group of chapel-goers who were members of the Nonconformist League.

They played their home games at a laid ground at the bottom of Kirk Hills (the Tyburn Lane side) in a field farmed by Albert Parker. A number of local men starred for this outfit, including Henry and Herbert Hardcastle, Thomas and Earnest Mathewman, Joe Parker, Hugh and Ashley Pattison, and Harry Stafford.

By the 1950s Emley CC was well established as a key village organisation. So much so that during the Coronation celebrations of 1953 the club was one of three local sports bodies asked to man a special float that travelled round the village.