CITY OF HULL ATHLETIC CLUB

(Incorporating Hull Harriers)
Founded 1882

(Robb Robinson)

A HISTORY – TO THE 1890s

Hull Harriers in Action 19th Century

The Origins of Our Sport

Though it is generally accepted that the foundations of modern athletics were laid in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the sport can in fact be traced back to the earliest times. The first athletes of whom we have accurate details were the Greeks who, of course, created the original Olympic Games in 776 BC.

The history of athletics in the British Isles seems also to be quite ancient in origin, although much of our earliest information comes from a collection of Irish sagas in which fact is hard to differentiate from legend. According to The Book of Leinster written about 1150 in Middle Irish, it is possible that the earliest athletic contests in the British Isles may pre-date the first of the ancient Olympic games. Indeed, Indeed, Lugnas or the Tailteann Games, which apparently included many modern standard events, may have started as early as 829 BC.

From the twelth century onward, references to athletics in England can regularly be found in surviving historical documents but until the eighteenth century our overall picture of the sport remains, at best, scant. It is known that Henry II (1154-1189) had open spaces near London set aside for sports whilst Edward III (1327-1377) prohibited stone or shot putting for fear that the military skill or archery was being neglected. Henry V (1413-1422) was also a fine runner whereas the young Henry VIII was good at plummet and hammer throwing as well as casting or tossing the bar, jumping and pole leaping. James I (1603-1625) recommended running and leaping to his son.

An early description of a stone putting contest can be found in Havelock the Dane (1275). Like the heroes of Greek and Irish legend, Havelock demonstrated his heroic qualities through athletic prowess. Over the following centuries athletic skills were often considered by writers to be essential attributes of a gentleman, though some events were considered to be more suitable than others. Elyot (1531), for example, praised running as "a good exercise and laudable solace" whereas Peacham (1622) thought hammer throwing to be "not so well beseeming nobility but rather soldiers in the camp". Then again Ascham in Toxophilus (1545) considered "running, leaping and quoiting" to be too vile for scholars". However, the epitome of the Elizabethan English gentleman, Sir Philip Sydney, described by Aubrey as "the most accomplished Cavalier of his time", excelled at running, shooting, leaping and swimming.

Pedestrianism

In the nineteenth century, athletics, like many sports, developed amateur and professional codes. The origins of professional athletics or pedestrianism are obscure. The Harleian MSS mentions an early 16th century foot-race at Chester for a prize of "six glayves of silver". Falstaff, in Henry IV Part 1 offers to run against Poins for £1000. Samuel Pepys, refers on several occasions to races between footmen in the Restoration Period and by the end of the eighteenth century an increasing number of reports on professional races were appearing in newspapers and journals. In 1813 W. Thoms published his book Pedestrianism which surveyed the outstanding performances to date and covered the career and training methods of the legendary Captain Barclay Allardyce. Captain Barclay (1779-1854) had won, amongst other prizes, some £16,000 by walking 1000 miles in 1000 successive hours before a crowd of 10,000 at Newmarket in 1809. This required him to walk a mile an hour, every hour for forty-two successive days. Public interest in pedestrianism continued to grow and reached a peak in the last quarter of the nineteenth century with epic six-day events held in London and other places. These events were often held indoors and took on the atmosphere of a horse race meeting. Heavy betting and great excitement built up as the competitors ground their way relentlessly around the circuit. Professional athletics then declined in importance but did not, of course, die out; the Powderhall Sprint, for example, became the highlight of the Scottish sport.

Barclay enjoyed a hearty drink but his training methods which involved purging, sweating and the eating of meat found much favour with many nineteenth century runners. Later, as athletics spread into the universities, more straightforward training programmes were adopted, although, as always, some athletes took this trend too far the other way and competed with only minimal training. The association of athletic ability with the manly ideal was still strong in the sport in the nineteenth century and equality of opportunity scarcely considered. Indeed Walker (1837) declared that "owing to the excessive shocks which both (running and leaping) communicate, neither are congenial to women". The achievements of women in the nineteenth century may well have been underplayed and certainly a number of women made a considerable mark in the field of pedestrianism. Exilda La Chapelle, born in France in 1859, and an English woman, Ada Anderson, both set incredible records for endurance in the United States in the late 1870s. Exilda made her was the first to make her name, walking in night races for a couple of years in front of raucous crowds before retiring from the sport to marry and have a child at the age of seventeen. Ada Anderson successfully walked 2700 miles in 2700 consecutive quarter hours. Not long afterwards, Exilda, heartbroken after the death of her infant son, decided to return to competition and between the 25th January and the 22nd February 1879, walked 3000 miles. During this walk her weight dropped from 100 to 92 pounds. She is believed to have competed for the last time at the age of 22 in California and nothing is known of her later life.

Captain Barclay Allardyce

Rural games had always been important, especially the famous Scottish Highland Games. South of the border, the seventeenth century Cotswold Games inspired Annalia Dubrensia, a book of poems. The annual Grasmere Sports are amongst the few such ancient games to survive. During the nineteenth century many English villages made a big feature of their athletic sports and, indeed, some still do today. Such sports are probably more closely related to modern athletics than pedestrianism.

Modern athletic meetings probably had their origins in the organised competitions held at the Royal; Military Academy at Woolwich, London in 1849. In 1850 students at Exeter College, Oxford, disappointed with their poor riding in the College steeplechase, staged a "footgrind" across country and an Exeter Autumn Meeting. This followed Jockey Club lines for top runners were even weighted and a Consolation Stakes for "beaten horses" was included. During the 1850s athletics spread through the Oxford and Cambridge colleges and in 1864 the two university towns met for the first time in what was to become one of the most fashionable meetings in the athletics calendar. Elsewhere, the sport began to take off. Liverpool Athletic Club was formed in January 1862 and London businessmen founded Mincing Lane Athletic Club in 1863. In late 1865 the Amateur Athletic Club was formed and their first Championships were held in the following year. The club may have been amateur but it aimed at being exclusive reflecting the class divisions apparent in Victorian society. Its definition of an amateur soon excluded "tradesmen, labourers, artisans or working mechanics".

Many of these early championships were primarily concerned with track and field but cross-country soon gained in favour. Cross-country has its origins in the early nineteenth century sport of hare and hounds or paper chasing, as made famous in Tom Brown's Schooldays. The first formal competition, the Crick Run, was first held at Rugby School in 1837. The best time recorded for this nine-mile event over roughish country prior to the 1870s was 62.45. Such events became popular not only at Rugby but also at Marlborough and other public schools, followed by Oxford and Cambridge Universities.

The harrier sport as such was probably first launched by members of Thames Rowing Club and London Athletic Club who organised the earliest cross-country hare and hounds outside of a public school across Wimbledon and Putney Commons on the 7th December 1867. Their original idea was to use such events as a means of keeping fit during the winter but the interest attracted led to the formation of Thames Hare and Hounds in 1868. Thames Hare and Hounds are, of course, the oldest such club in the world and met in its early days at the Kings Head, Roehampton Bottom which was equidistant from Barnes and Putney Stations on the London and South Western Railway. By 1871 there were several other clubs in the London area including Hornsey Harriers and the Mars Harriers that "hunted" in the Lea Bridge district. Membership of many of these early packs was confined to gentlemen. Indeed an 1874 copy of Thames Hare and Hounds Rules and Bye-Laws specifically prohibited members from competing at any tradesmen’s meeting under pain of expulsion and stated that "no one who is under eighteen years of age, or who is not a gentleman by position and education, shall be eligible for election". However, the Sporting Gazette of January 1871 noted with approval that the sport was being taken up by others and fortnightly tradesmen’s runs were regularly taking place from Hampstead and elsewhere. Wimbledon Common, Richmond Park, the Sheens, Kew, Mortlake, Petersham, amongst other places, were considered to afford capital country for runs though it was reported that "farmers, as elsewhere, are decidedly adverse to the pattern being laid over their grounds".

In those early days a dozen "hounds" formed the average sized field, although as many as twenty-five might turn up. The hares, who laid the trail with strips of paper carried in long bags slung over their shoulders, were given ten minutes start. The trail of paper was known as the scent and the hares were expected to follow the scent unless/until they sighted the hares when they could chase them directly. According to the Sporting Gazette, the average pace, including checks, was generally reckoned at about seven and a half miles per hour and about ten miles was the average distance then covered. If the hares ploughed through the thickest mud or swam a river no hound was reckoned as having finished unless they followed their trail.

The first English Cross-Country Championships were staged in Epping Forest in 1876. However, all thirty-two competitors went off course and the race had to be declared void. The following year’s event, held over eleven and a quarter miles at Roehamption, is therefore considered the inaugural race. By 1881 the Championships attracted more than 100 starters and from 1883 were organised by the English Cross-Country Union, originally known as the National Cross-Country Union. The number of participants grew decade after decade and by 1979 no less than 1672 runners took part in the Senior Championship event. The first international, between France and England, was held in 1898 and the international championships began in 1903.

Meanwhile track and field athletics continued to develop. There was an upsurge of interest amongst all classes in the north and midlands that challenged the ill-enforced class rules of the AAC and other athletic bodies. In 1879 representatives of twelve northern clubs met to form the Northern Counties Amateur Athletic Association and in the next year the Midland Counties Amateur Athletic association was formed. The Amateur Athletic Association followed a few months later. The moving forces behind the AAA were three young Oxford men, Clement N. Jackson, 33, Bernhard R. Wise, 21, and Montague Shearman 22. The first AAA Championships were held on the 3rd July 1880 at Lille Bridge and the modern athletics movement was underway.

The latter third of the nineteenth century witnessed the development of many organised sports, competitions and the emergence of many sporting clubs. In part, this was an outcome of a marginal increase in leisure time and perhaps affluence for some working class and professional men. Many people worked a five and a half-day week and an increasing number of sports made use of Saturday afternoons. Railways also played an important part in the development of local and national competition. The national rail network was largely completed by the 1860s and in later decades was increasingly used by various sports and their associated clubs for competitions over a wider geographical area.

The Origins of Our Club

Our club took the name City of Hull Athletic Club when Hull Harriers and Hull Achilles Club amalgamated in 1970. In 2001 the club was re-constituted after a substantial number of its members elected to join forces with others across the city in the newly formed Kingston Athletic Club. A large number of road and country runners did not wish to join the new set up and the name of the club and many of its competitions which had been running since the nineteenth century were continued under a new constitution. Indeed, we have laid claim, through our Hull Harriers lineage to have one of the longest athletic lineages in the country.

The Nineteenth Century Background

In the later nineteenth century, the immediate Hull area presented a markedly different picture to the one we are familiar with today. The town - for it did not achieve city status until 1897 - was much smaller. Its population in 1881 being just over 165,000 compared with 295,000 by 1966. Though parts of its central districts were packed with notorious slums, other areas that we now know as crowded streets and suburbs were then fields and woods. Hessle Road was still being built along, as were Anlaby, Beverley and Holderness Roads. You would not have to travel far down what we now know as Spring Bank West to find yourself in open countryside. Pubs such as the Gardners Arms on Cottingham Road were then beyond the edge of the urban sprawl, whilst several miles of flat fields - many like those that can still be seen along Priory Road today - separated the town from the surrounding villages of Hessle, Kirkella, Cottingham and Sutton. During the latter half of the nineteenth century local newspapers often carried reports of athletic sports days. Many local towns and villages, including Beverley, Cottingham, Hessle and South Cave, attracted large crowds to their summer meetings.

Hull Athletic Club

In 1879 Hull Athletic Club was formed and, after originally holding meetings on its own ground in Coltman Street, a new cinder track of approximately 350 yards was laid out in 1881. The entrance to the ground was by a track from Spring Lane - now known as Spring Bank West. The area was then open country on the edge of town but the track was later included in the grounds of Hymers College and survived until the later twentieth century. Today, its outline can still sometimes be made out in the grass during drought years. Hull Athletic Club joined the Northern Counties Amateur Athletic Association - formed in the same year - and their events attracted large crowds. The quality of competition was often strong by Victorian standards. In June 1885, for example, the mile handicap race was won by George Lidiard (scratch) in 4.40 and ten or twelve seconds either side seems a typical standard. In those days athletic meetings covered a range of events from 100 yards to three miles and most were handicapped; bicycle and tricycle races were also a major part of the programme. It was said the no club in the north of England had a higher reputation than Hull Athletic Club and its May 1888 meeting boasted twelve events and 265 entries, including athletes from Grimsby, Nottingham, Leeds, Doncaster, York and Batley. The gate was heavy and a local newspaper reported that 14,000 spectators had paid for admission. Many modern meetings would love to attract even half as many.

Hull Athletic Club Programme 1880

Hull athletes did not limit themselves to local events for in May 1887 a contingent of them met with "gratifying success" in the sports of Cureghen United A.C. in Brussels. J.S. Leeming of Hull A.C. took the 120 yards handicap whilst his club-mate, A. Close, claimed first position in the quarter mile bicycle race.

As far as running was concerned, Hull Athletic Club was primarily concerned with summer track events. Yet it acted as a catalyst for the development of many other sports in the area. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century people worked long hours and the average working week was at least five and a half days with strict observance of the Sabbath. For an increasing number - of men at least - Saturday afternoons was an opportunity to spectate or participate in sport. In winter Hull Athletic Club ran a successful rugby team but many other sporting clubs began to spring up. Amongst the most prominent of these were cycling and tricycle clubs that proved extremely popular at this time.

Hull Harriers

Prominent amongst Hull Athletic Club members were George Lidiard and Charles Campion Merrikin. Lidiard owned a considerable reputation as an amateur track athlete: in 1885 - when the average wage was little more than £1 per week - he was to win £40 worth of prizes over the summer. Lidiard had established his reputation with South London Harriers, one of the earliest such clubs, and probably missed the winter cross-country or harrier season that had gradually been developing down south since the formation of Thames Hare and Hounds in the later 1860s. C.C. Merrikin (1860-1939) was another successful track athlete as well as a leading member of Hull Bicycle Club and a most popular figure on the local sporting scene. These two, together with several other local sportsmen, including V. Lassen, W.C. Mayfield and W.H. Pearson, were to form Hull Harriers in the autumn of 1882.

The First Runs

The newly formed club appointed George Lidiard as captain and held their first run on Saturday 4th November 1882 from the Duke of Cumberland in North Ferriby (the old Duke stood just in front of the present building and was demolished when its replacement was built in the 1920s). The members turned out for this first of countless runs, starting up the hill to Swanland. From there they crossed the fields to Welton Dale, passed through Waudby, along the track to Braffords Farm, Raywell and then started back by way of Swanland Mill (which stood opposite the northern end of Woodgates Lane) to Ferriby. The distance covered was estimated to be ten miles and much of this route is, of course, familiar running terrain for many of today's club membership.

Eleven members turned out for the club's second run, this time from the old Railway Inn, Cottingham on 23rd November 1882 (the old pub stood more or less on the site of the present building). Runs usually followed the harrier tradition in that two hares set off about ten to fifteen minutes ahead of the pack carrying bags of paper with which to lay a trail. They were then followed, depending on numbers, by anything up to three packs; respectively fast, medium and slow. The last mile was usually a hell for leather affair in which Lidiard generally came home first with Merrikin not far behind. The trail, that second run, was laid up Castle Hill and across the fields to Harland Rise. There the chasing pack lost the scent – the paper trail - but after a short search picked it up leading in the direction of Skidby Mill. This took them across country to Burn Park where they lost their way once more. When they finally found it again they headed through a plantation in the direction of Beverley where they turned along the highway to Cottingham and home. The pack had left at 2.40 pm and arrived back at 5pm, some twenty-four minutes after the hares. The distance covered was reported to be about twelve miles.

The club carried out a number of runs from different pubs in the district over the remainder of the season. In February 1883, for example, they covered an estimated eighteen miles in a run from the Marquis of Granby in Hessle. The hares set off that day at 3.15pm and laid a trail across the fields to Spring Head then on towards Haltemprice. At this point two members of the chasing pack got stuck in a broad drain and much time was lost extricating them. The chase then continued towards Willerby and Kirkella, across some rough country to Raywell Wood and on to Rowley and Weedley before cutting back by Brafford to Westella. From there the trail led across the fields to Humber Dale where all bar three of the pack turned for home. This trio followed the trail on to Swanland, taking the highway to the top of Ferriby Hill, before making their way down to the Duke of Cumberland in Ferriby for refreshments and the run back to Hessle. They returned to the Granby at 6.45pm, half an hour after the hares.

In March they had another epic run in the form of a twenty miler from the Ship Inn in Hedon. This time the runners passed through Swine, North Skirlaugh and Coniston. At one stage the hares, who were in danger of being caught, got away by darting in through the front door of a cottage and out of the back. One runner was injured by a spike but all got safely back to the pub by 7.15 pm.

The Following Seasons

With the onset of spring the harrier season ended and many of the members returned to the track or the bike for the summer but over the following two winter seasons the club widened its activities and took part in several inter-club runs, most notably with Huddersfield and Leeds Harehills Harriers. One of these runs, which started from Selby in February 1885 was mentioned in the same edition of the Eastern Morning News that reported the fall of Khartoum. Every opportunity was taken to make the most of these occasions and the clubs often dined together afterwards.

The Formation of Nightingale Harriers

At the opening of the 1885/6 season Hull Harriers appeared to be in good health. The September AGM recorded a balance of £2/1/11d and Mr W.H. Pearson was elected President whilst George Lidiard was confirmed as Captain. However, the following months saw a marked decline in enthusiasm and it proved difficult to turn out sufficient runners to hold many proper paper chases. By the end of the season the club was all but moribund. Ironically, this was the very season when cross-country running really took off in the town and many new clubs were formed. The most notable, from our point of view, was Nightingale Harriers. Others included Stepney Sunday School Harriers and Hull Collegiate House Harriers, the latter largely a team of young scholars. Nightingale Harriers soon established themselves as a "young and flourishing club" turning out on Saturday afternoons from venues such as the Haworth Arms and the George down Spring Head Road. In February 1886 they took the Humber ferry and ran from the Pelham Inn, New Holland.

Such runs were by no means easy jaunts, especially as opportunities for training, given the long working day, were much more limited. Yet there was always room for humour. On one of these outings, a member of the pack took a hansom cab back to base whilst his team mates struggled through the mud from Anlaby and then had the temerity to claim a place in the first three, which is one alternative our club's current present short cut specialist hasn't tried - yet. The Nightingales also turned their hand to rugby on a couple of occasions, taking on the newly formed Newland RFC. To the chagrin of Newland, the Nightingales triumphed in the first of these encounters held in November 1885. The return, won by Newland in March 1886, was steeped in acrimony. Accusations were leveled that Newland had fielded up to nineteen men whilst it was claimed that the rugby players were disgusted by the harriers' obscene language!

Inter-Club Runs

Attempts were soon made to establish formal inter-club runs with C.D. Hiscocks (Nightingales) and C. Pearson (Collegiate) taking the lead. The latter invited all clubs to a run from the cemetery gates on Spring Bank on Christmas Day 1885 but it is not clear just how successful this venture was and Hull Harriers were reported to have planned a similar event for later in the season.

Hull and Stepney Harriers Late 19th Century

The Nightingales rounded off their first season with a run on Good Friday 1886. A wagonette conveyed them from their headquarters at the Crown and Cushion Inn down the Land of Green Ginger to Walton Street where the hares set off with bags. The pack then followed a circuitous route through Hessle, on to the foreshore and through the chalk pits (now known as Little Switzerland or the Humber Bridge Country Park). Ploughed fields were crossed before Ferriby was reached en route for Welton. A game of football then followed in Welton Dale before a wagonette carried them back to the club headquarters where a grand dinner was demolished.

The First Monstre Meet

The following seasons saw the Nightingales consolidate their position. Its members - notably John Baker, Alf Adams and secretary C.D. Hiscocks - are credited with organising the first Monstre meet of local clubs. Fifty athletes turned up at the Duke of Cumberland in Cottingham for the first meet in December 1886. The social that followed, chaired by George Lidiard of Hull Harriers, proved a memorable and high-spirited affair. The Nightingales set another precedent that season, being the first local club to enter the Kennedy Cup, the forerunner of the present Yorkshire Cross-Country Championship, where they took a creditable third place.

Unification of Hull Harriers and the Nightingales

Between the end of the season in March 1887 and the start of the next the following autumn, arrangements were made to unite Hull Harriers and the Nightingales. Though the club was henceforward known as Hull Harriers many of its more prominent positions were at first held by former Nightingales with C.D. Hiscocks as Secretary and John Baker as Vice-Captain. However, by 1889 Charles Merrikin was President. The new club colours adopted in 1887 was an Oxford and Cambridge jersey with vertical stripes but this had been changed to pale blue and white by 1890. The central motif on the badge was a five-barred gate, as formerly used by the Nightingales. The now familiar three crowns motif was actually being used by a club called Boulevard Harriers at the end of the 1880s. Soon several championships were being organised. The original eight-mile route was from the Gardeners along Beverley Road down Dunswell Lane and back by New Village and Cottingham Roads. At that time, almost all of the route was through open countryside. Forty seven minutes was considered an exceptionally fast scratch time on this rough and sometimes rutted route.

Along the Coast at Withernsea – Late Nineteenth Century

Other Harrier Clubs

By the 1889/90 season several other harrier clubs had sprung into existence. These include St Marks, St Phillips, Melwood and Boulevard Harriers. Our old friends and long term rivals, East Hull Harriers were founded as Hull Holderness Presbyterian Harriers in 1893. Saturday afternoon venues were usually reached by train or other public transport and a typical run would be followed by a huge tea and perhaps a smoking concert with plenty of singing. That the sport was still in its formative years is evident from the relative youth of all concerned. Many senior officials were hardly into their twenties and only a few of the runners were much older. The most notable local runner of that time was actually a member of Leeds Harehills Harriers. William J. Sellers was brought up in Southgate, Hessle but seems to have trained as a teacher in Leeds where he developed as a harrier. In 1889, when about twenty-five old, he won the first Yorkshire Cross Country Championships and followed it by winning the Northerns in "ridiculously easy fashion". He was also the first secretary of the Yorkshire Cross-Country Association and won the Yorkshires on three occasions, taking the title again in 1890 and 1895.

The Hull and District Cross-Country Association

In January 1889 Hull Harriers earned themselves a niche in history by joining with a small group of other clubs to form the Yorkshire Cross-Country Association and they took part in the first championships held at Pudsey. A year previously a Hull and East Riding Cross-Country Association had actually been started but collapsed ignominiously before staging an event due to ill-feeling amongst the clubs. The lack of such an organisation was keenly felt and in December 1889 Hull Harriers called the other local clubs to their headquarters at the Spring Bank Hotel and the Hull and District Cross-Country Association was duly born. A further series of meetings were held, a constitution was drawn up and officials elected. Charles Merrikin was made President and other members of Hull Harriers, John Baker and Harry Hodgson were respectively Treasurer and Hon Secretary. Harrier clubs within a 35 mile radius of the town were eligible to join and, like some other cross-country of the era, it was decided that the championship be held on a cinder track "or such course as the committee may decide on".

The first annual championship was arranged for the 15th March 1890 and the clubs agreed that a silver cup be acquired by the Association to be presented annually to the winning team. A gold medal was to be presented to the individual winners whilst silver and bronze medals were to be awarded to members of the first and second teams home. In the event, the cup, which is of course, still in use, was not acquired until 1894

Local excitement and interest grew as the date of the Championship drew near. There was great speculation as to the outcome and heavy betting was reputedly taking place off the course with the local sporting press tipping the Association's secretary, Hull Harriers Captain Harry Hodgson, although his club-mate, John Baker, along with J. Sykes of St Marks and Stepney's Walter Lusby were also fancied. Hull Harriers decided to select their team in late February after an eight-mile trial race from the Gardners Arms, through Dunswell and back via Cottingham. Nine of the club’s leading runners took part and by Dunswell, Harry Hodgson had obtained a commanding lead over an ailing John Baker who, nevertheless, held on to second place. Immediately afterwards the committee went into deliberation and selected the seven-man championship squad. Over the remaining weeks the training was said to consist of Saturday runs supplemented by long evening walks. The stage was set.

The day of the race dawned and the competitors and crowds made their way to the commodious Hull Kingston Rovers rugby ground, then on Hessle Road. The large crowd paid an entrance fee, which more than covered championship expenses, and were first able to watch a rugby match between White Rose and Beverley Excelsior. The course was then prepared and 35 athletes from seven local clubs lined up J.W. Cresser set the field off with a report from his blunderbuss and Harry Hodgson, slowest man away, made his way swiftly through the field before passing through the first mile in six minutes. He was closely followed by team mate John Baker and Turner of Boulevard Harriers. Behind this trio three St Marks runners were packing well whilst Walter Lusby of Stepney held seventh place. This order was retained for the rest of the race but gradually a number of tail-enders succumbed to cramp or the pace and dropped out. Unfortunately, this included three of the Hull Harriers team.

Once into the last lap Baker began to press Hodgson and, as the lead shortened, the noise and excitement of the crowd grew in intensity. Once in the home straight, Hodgson broke into a sprint and came home ten yards clear on the eight-mile course in 46.21. Baker crossed the line second and Turner third. The crowd, overjoyed by this epic last dash, surged around the runners, throwing the officials and rest of the finish into great confusion. Though Hull Harriers had taken the first two places, they had not finished a full team and St Marks, who packed so well, took the team prize with forty points from Stepney with fifty three. Crowds and confusion made it difficult to work out the positions of the other clubs but most seemed more than satisfied with the event and that evening adjourned to the Spring bank Hotel which was soon bursting at the seams. There the medals were duly presented to the individual and team winners and Charlie Merrikin, the President, announcing that he thought it hard lines the second and third men got nothing, decided he would award them medals of equal value to the winning team. This offer took everyone by surprise and his health was enthusiastically drunk with musical honours. A high spirited evening followed with soloists singing a considerable repertoire of music hall songs before hoarsely rounding off the evening with Auld Lang Syne.

Respecting the medals, it was afterwards reported "that the pawn shops were soon doing a large business". Such was the birth of the Hull and District Cross-Country Association and the longest running local athletic championships. The Monstre Meet and Hull and District Cross Country Championships have now entered their third century. Few other local sports have inter-club club competitions with such a pedigree. These two competitions deserve much a much higher profile than they possess at present and far greater attention from local clubs and local runners.

John Baker and Harry Hodgson

Two Hull Harriers dominated the local running scene at the end of the 1880s. John Baker, was one of the prime movers in the organisation of both the Monstre Meet and the Hull and District Cross-Country Association. He was appointed vice-captain of the club in 1887, made captain the following year and finished fourteenth out of seventy seven runners in the first Yorkshire Cross-Country Championships. Baker, like many early Hull Harriers, probably started on a bike but had been induced to "don the pumps" at the back end of the summer of 1885 and gave a good account of himself, finishing third to Ben Bolton and Charley Cowen. The following season he took to the track in great earnest and soon won his first handicap mile, adding three further prizes before the end of the season. These included the three-mile harriers' handicap over hurdles - the first time such an event had been staged in Hull - and the Hull Athletic Club Mile Championship in 4.44. The following year, at the Hull F.C. evening sports, he worked his way through a field of 38 runners from scratch on a wretchedly wet and sodden track to win in 4.41. In 1889 he was only 23 but had already won more than £80 worth of prizes with thirteen first places, eleven seconds and eleven thirds to his credit. During the 1890s Baker was to win the Hull and District Championship on at least two occasions.

Harry Hodgson was a freeman of Beverley and had joined a new harrier club formed in connection with Beverley Cycling and Athletic Club in 1886. Unlike many other early harrier clubs this one's members seem to have run mainly at night. His first race that year was in the annual sports of the club when he finished fourth in the four mile handicap then took second place to another well-known Beverley runner, Will Carrington, in a two and a half mile handicap after the two had run neck and neck for much of the distance. The following year he moved to Hull and ran with Baker as part of Hull Harriers' team in the Kennedy Cup and won a number of local races during the summer track season. Although injury curtailed his running on the country in the 1888/9 season he came back later in the summer to win track races at Leicester, Lincoln, Manchester and Nottingham. In Manchester he was beaten in the premier mile event by the leading miler, A.B. Snell, but finished in front of many of the country's leading runners with the then superb time of 4.21. Hodgson took over from Baker as club captain in 1889 and, of course, won the first Hull and District Cross-Country Championship later that season.

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