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.

MANCHESTER

WAREHOUSEMEN & CLERKS

CHESS CLUB

PRESENTED BY

HERBERT WALLS

1953

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 possible that from 1986-87 to 1992-93 the NCCU ran no Under-150 competition of its own but had the right to nominate entrants for the BCF competition, in line with how things normally work. Alternatively, results from before 1993-94 may have been unavailable when engraving was done.

Winners in the list in the 1999 Centenary booklet and those engraved on the trophy itself differ slightly, as follows:

Season	Centenary Booklet	Trophy Engraving
1992-93	Lancashire	(no engraving)
1993-94	Cleveland	Cleveland
1994-95	Lancashire	Cleveland

The Cheshire 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 top be right there, and maybe there is no engraving for 1992-93 because at that stage in proceedings, perhaps, no trophy had yet been sourced to be engraved.

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 (L.). Solicitor, aged 58. Lives at Torkington, Hazel Grove. Married and has one daughter. Was secretary of Newton Heath Liberal Association for many years. President of Stockport Incorporated Law Society in 1942. Public work includes: president Cheadle Division Liberal Association; vice-president Knutsford Division Liberal Association; past chairmanships of Hazel Grove Ratepayers’ Association, Horticultural Society, Allotment Development Committee, League of Nations Union, and Poultry Club. Hobbies include chess, gardening, fishing, old coins, deeds and documents.

From the Manchester Evening News

of 13/02/1950

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.