Pub history

The W. G. Grace

Clifton College cricket ground, known as The Close, features in a famous poem by Sir Henry Newbolt. It was also the ground where Dr WG Grace, one of the all-time cricketing greats, played his first serious representative match, at the age of 15. Born in 1848, at Downend (then a village and now a suburb of Bristol), Grace scored 14 first-class centuries at The Close, including 221 runs against Middlesex, taking 10 wickets in the same match.