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Northern Counties Chess Union Established 1899 A constituent unit of the English Chess Federation |
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Trophies |
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Walls Trophy
Often, a trophy from a long-gone competition gets recycled and put into use for a different competition, quite possibly a new competition of a different organisation. The Wall trophy is one such trophy. The inscriptions on plates on the front and back of the plinth read as follows.
Thus, Herbert Walls originally donated the trophy to serve as the club championship trophy for the names club, of which he was a member.
The named chess club may well have had charitable connections, as there was The Manchester Warehousemen and Clerks' Orphan Schools founded as a charity in 1855 (eventually becoming the present Cheadle Hulme School). The club is recorded as winning the Manchester league in 1928 and 1946. As for Herbert Walls, see below.
The trophy was put into service for the NCCU’s Under-150 team championship. The BCF introduced its Under 150 contest in 1986-87, when Lancashire won it, according to ECF result tables. Nevertheless, the inscriptions on the Wall Trophy start with 1993-94. It seems probable that from 1986-87 to 1992-93 the NCCU had no trophy for its Under-150 competition, rather suggesting the trophy was donated to the NCCU around 1993.
Wall trophy winners in the list in the 1999 NCCU Centenary booklet on the one hand and those engraved on the trophy itself on the other hand differ slightly, as follows:
The Cleveland history article in the booklet mentioned a “double” of wins in the NCCU U-150 and U-125 in 1994, but didn’t mention a repeat U-150 win in 1995, so the booklet seems likely to be right for 1994-95. There is no engraving for 1992-93 because at that stage in proceedings, presumably as the Walls Trophy had yet to be put into service.
A list of winners can be found here.
Herbert Walls
There were a few people called Herbert Walls in the Manchester area, with or without a second forename, but the following solicitor, local councillor, Liberal parliamentary candidate and general do-gooder, who mentioned chess in his interests, looks 99% certain to be the trophy donor, though a specific mention of the donation being made by him is not evident.
Herbert Walls was born on 27/06/1892 in Prestwich. He married Minnie Merrin Rogerson (b. 08/02/1902) in 1926, and had a daughter Muriel Joan Walls. In 1939 three were living with a relative of the wife and a domestic servant at Wayside, Torkington, Hazel Grove, Manchester. Wife Minnie died suddenly when they were on holiday in Tal-y-Bont. He died, aged 69, in late 1961 or early 1962 in the Horwich district of Manchester. By profession, Herbert was a solicitor, but was also a Liberal councillor, in which context he popped up in the local newspapers from time to time. He stood as a Liberal candidate for the Clayton division in the 1950 General Election but was not successful. At the time the local paper published a “Know Your Candidate” article covering three vying candidates, the text of which for Herbert Walls ran as above. They forgot to mention that he was on the local Air Raid Precaution committee during the war. You were presumably expected to know that he was a local councillor.
The chess column in the Manchester Evening News of 19th March 1932 shows Herbert Walls playing for the Manchester Warehousemen & Clerks Chess Club in the Manchester “C” league, as follows:
The same column shows a “J. A. Herrick” playing for Old Mancunians in Manchester’s Reyner Shield. This J. A. Herrick likely to be the one recorded as winning the Walls Trophy in 1970, or else a relative of that J. A. Herrick:
Identifying winners of the Manchester Warehousemen & Clerks club championship engraved on the trophy is difficult due to multiple occurrences of people with a given name where only initials are given.
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