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Yorkshire Chess History |
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Stanley Wilkinson |
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Non-Chess Life
Stanley Wilkinson was one of four children born to William Wilkinson, born 03/10/1899, Clayworth, Notts., and Gladys Doreena F Cordingley, born 01/06/1900, Idle (a village now having now become a northern suburb of Bradford) who had married in 1923 at Idle. Father William was a market gardener working on his own account, as had been before him his own father, who was also called William. The children were
(The North Brierley registration district included Idle.)
That Stanley’s birth was registered in Bradford rather than North Brierley suggests that, as was then common, the first child was born in the home of a relative such as the mother’s mother.
Reports of his chess exploits at the age of 13 reported that he lived at 1 Cockshott Lane, Idle. However, the 1939 Register suggests that the Wilkinson’s domestic arrangements where slightly more complicated. The Register records parents William and Gladys living at 1 Cockshott Lane with three other people whose detailed are withheld as is the case for people not known to be death when the record was prepared. These three would appear to have been Stanley’s three sisters, as we find Stanley living at 3 Cockshott Lane with his paternal grandmother, Annie Wilkinson (b. 08/04/1869, Bedford).
Young Stanley received a scholarship to attend Bradford Grammar School. He did not progress to university, possibly for financial reasons but more probably because World War 2 had intervened. At the age of 15, Stanley became a “cub reporter” at the Bradford office of the Yorkshire Post, starting a long career in journalism.
On 05/04/1942, soon after Stanley had started his first job, a German bomber crashed in Idle, demolishing two cottages and damaging two others, killing a man, a woman and a child and injuring five more people. On hearing the to do, Stanley went outside to investigate. He saw something white in a field which he took to be a cow, though it was in fact a discarded parachute. Then he saw a figure vaulting over a gate, so he hailed the figure who proved to be a Luftwaffe crewman who could get by in broken English and “surrendered” to 15-year-old Stanley asking to be taken to the police. Three other crew members were later apprehended. This led to a report in the next day’s Yorkshire Post in Bradford.
At the age of 18, Stanley left the Yorkshire post and joined the Navy. What he got up to in the Navy isn’t immediately evident, but in due course he returned to Civvy Street and re-joined the Yorkshire Post.
His next move was to Harrogate to work as sports editor with Ackrill Newspapers which produced various newspapers of mainly local interest, such as the Harrogate Advertiser, The Ripon Gazette and The Knaresborough Post. Quite when the move to Harrogate occurred is not immediately clear, but from chess records it was certainly by 1957, and there’s a hint that it may have been by 1950 on the basis of the quality of reporting on Harrogate Chess Club in the Ripon Gazette at that time.
Next came a move to take up the post of features editor of the Doncaster Evening Post. Chess records quote him as residing in Bawtry, near Doncaster in 1966.
A report in the 02/08/1974 edition of the Retford, Gainsborough & Worksop Times reported that at a meeting of the Blyth Women’s Institute, “Mr. Stanley Wilkinson, Assistant Editor of the ‘Doncaster Evening Post’, spoke to members on ‘Putting together a newspaper’.”
According to an obituary for Stanley Wilkinson in the holdthefrontpage.co.uk website which serves as a journalist recruitment facility, he then become features editor of the Wakefield Express, retiring from that role in 1990. When he took up the Wakefield job is unclear, but it may have coincided with his ceasing his chess column in the Yorkshire Post, so perhaps about 1984.
The Wakefield job presumably occasioned a change of residence to Wakefield, though on retirement he must have returned to Bawtry where he ended his days residing at 8 Sycamore Crescent, Bawtry, which was possibly formerly were his mother ended her days.
Besides chess, his interests reportedly included gardening, doubtless inherited from his father and grandfather, and also local club cricket.
Reportedly, Stan Wilkinson got married at some stage and had children, but that side of things is difficult to pin down.
Death
Stan Wilkinson died in 2007, probably in June. The obituary on the holdthefrontpage.co.uk website gave his age as 79, but he must have been 81 or 82 depending on whether he died before or after his 82nd birthday. Fellow Bawtry resident and chess-player Jim Burnett attended the funeral.
Chess
The young Stanley learnt to play chess around October 1937 and was “trained” in chess by blind chess-player Richard Brearly of Idle. (Whether it was Mr. Brearley who taught Stanley to play in the very first place is unclear.)
At the age of 13, he was one of 29 players confronting Belgian master George Koltanowski when he gave a simultaneous display to Bradford Chess Club on 08/02/1938. Koltanowski won 24 games and drew 5, one of those being with Stanley. After 21 moves, Stanley had what would be regarded as an equal game and he offered Koltanowski a draw which, as one writer expressed it, “the master sportingly accepted.” This was widely reported in papers the length and breadth of the country as a very clever feat on Stranley’s part, though one suspects Koltanowski may well have won had he not so generously accepted the young lad’s offer of a draw. For the record, the others recording draws were Dr. Richmond, C. W. Roberts (Brighouse), G. O. Feather (Thornton) and C. H. Leach.
The Koltanowski draw stimulated interest in chess at Bradford Grammer School, so perhaps the Belgian’s generosity bore some unexpected benefit to chess. Stanley’s class started a weekly chess club “under the vice-presidency” of the senior classical master. The school magazine, “the Bradfordian”, later said, “It would be a gain to the school if if the ancient game became popular again, and the school chess cup, which has mouldered in the office since 1922, were taken out and once more competed for. It might also prove amusing to hold another Master v School Chess Match; the last was played in 1929. In 1922 two of the Oxford University chess team were Old Bradfordians.”
On 10/10/1938, World Champion Alexander Alekhine gave a simultaneous display at Leeds. Alekhine played 35 opponents, beating 27, drawing with 6 and losing to Dr. H. Cunningham (Bradford) and William Batley (Sheffield). (Batley’s own chess column reported 36 opponents but listed only 35 of them.) 15-year-old Stanley lasted out more than four hours, playing 45 moves, but lost a vital pawn and resigned. That was arguably more of a feat than drawing with Koltanowski in 21 moves!
On 03/11/1941, by which time opportunities for over-the-board chess were limited by the war, it was reported that 16-year-old Stanley had been included in the Yorkshire team to play against Lancashire a correspondence chess match.
Harrogate Chess Club had a run of success in 1951, 1952 and 1953 in winning the I. M. Brown Shield three seasons in a row. This was of course before the concept of promotion and relegation between the I. M. Brown and the Woodhouse Cup. Soon after, a Woodhouse team must have dropped out as Harrogate got into the Woodhouse Cup. The club’s strength was presumably improving around this time, and Harrogate actually won the Woodhouse Cup in the season 1957-58, a feat as yet never repeated. To celebrate Harrogate’s annus mirabilis, a “Victory Dinner” was held on the evening of Friday 25th of April 1958 at the Adelphi Hotel, Harrogate. A report was carried by the Ripon Gazette of 01/05/1058, recording amongst other things the presence of Yorkshire CA prresident, Dr. C. G. Addingley, and Mr. S. Wilkinson (Harrogate team vice-captain). Obviously, Stan Wilkinson was the author of the article, and he was currying favour with his employer as “Mr. R. H. Stockton, Editor-in-Chief of the R. Ackrill Group of Newspapers” was mentioned as responding to one of the toasts.
Stanley Wilkinson’s main contribution to chess was his weekly chess column in the Yorkshire Post, normally on Saturdays, but such columns sometimes get pushed on to Monday due to exceptional circumstances. Whether this was before or after he moved from Harrogate to Doncaster/Bawtry is unclear.
The first edition of his column appeared in the Yorkshire Post of 08/04/1961. It did not mention Stan by name. It read as follows:
In due course he adopted the approach of presenting a position one week but withholding the moves arising from the position until the following week. In time, he also adopted the idea of numbering the diagrams, and three years on it was evident the above was taken as number 1 and there had been an unbroken weekly sequence since then.
He began to add chess news, much being items of a local flavour which might not otherwise reach a wide public.
His last Yorkshire Post column was published on 25/02/1984 and featured the up-and-coming 16-year-old Angus Dunnington whose play Stan regarded as on a par with grandmasters of that age. (Angus managed to become an IM, but never, alas, a GM.) After detailing Angus’s career to date, the article concluded as follows, possibly the following having been added by the editor: “He will start writing about chess in the Yorkshire Post on March 3. Angus takes over from Stanley Wilkinson, who has been writing this chess column for 23 years and is now retiring.”
The column had spanned 1,195 Saturdays, yet by February 1984 the diagram numbers were only in the 1,170s, the number in the final column being only 1,175”. Thus in 20 of those 1,195 weeks there had been either no column at all, perhaps due to Christmas day falling on a Saturday for instance, or there not being a diagram.
Duly, on 03/03/1984, Angus Dunnington kicked off with his own diagram no. 1.
Stan Wilkinson represented Doncaster in the Woodhouse Cup from as early as 1970 (and probably before) to 1984 (and possibly after).
The Ripon Gazette of 04/05/1984 reported on a buffet dinner at the Crown Hotel to celebrate the centenary of Harrogate Chess Club. Stan Wilkinson was the guest speaker. Many names of those attending are familiar. Attenders listed were: P Donnelly, J Duckworth, J Elvin, J C Howell, R Hughes, Mrs G Irving, E A Little, E G Marks, E P Muldoon, Mrs L Nag, S Pude, Mrs M Rowley, V J A Russ, R Slatcher, A F Spalton, J N Spratt, M R Stokes, M F Thomas, F Tierney, A J Trafford, V Vest, T Wicks, J D S C Wilkinson [no relative] and S Wilkinson.
Whilst it seems he lived in Wakefield from about 1984 to 1990 or later, there is only scant evidence of him playing chess in or for Wakefield in that period. Specifically, he seems not to be mentioned in a YCA Bulletin of 1990. Nevertheless, the Ripon Gazette of 28/02/1992 reported him playing on board 4 for Wakefield in an 8-board Huddersfield v Wakefield match in “the league” which due to the number of boards was clearly the I. M. Brown Shield. The same article was carried by the Pateley Bridge and Nidderdale Herald, and the Knaresborough Post – all Ackrill newspapers. (This was plainly not penned by Stan Wilkinson.) Playing regularly in the I. M. Brown (Yorkshire’s division 2) perhaps did not attract Stan, but he may have turned out for the odd crucial match.
The obituary on the holdthefrontpage.co.uk website claimed he was a one-time winner of the British Postal Chess Championship, but he is not listed as a winner of the British Correspondence Chess Championship on sites which are more reliable sources of such data. (He may have won some sort of correspondence championship or played in a winning Yorkshire team.)
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Created 29/09/2024 |
Copyright © 2024 Stephen John Mann Census information is copyright of The National Archive, see UK Census Information |
Last Updated 04/10/2024 |