2025 is an historic year for women’s and girls’ cricket in Wales as a Glamorgan Women’s team take to the field for the first time. Their inaugural game – a 50-overs friendly against Somerset – will take place at Taunton this coming Friday, 11 April, before their first home match at Sophia Gardens against Sussex on Saturday 19 April. (writes Andrew Hignell)
This summer as well as 2026, will see the women’s team play in the Tier 2 competitions overseen by the England and Wales Cricket Board before the Glamorgan team is elevated into the Tier One tournaments for 2027. The team will be based at Sophia Gardens, the home of Glamorgan Cricket, as well as being financed by the county organisation. However, this is not the first time that a women’s team bearing the name Glamorgan Ladies, or South Wales Women, has taken to the field albeit as a separate entity and unaffiliated to the first-class club.
As in the evolution of men’s cricket, members of aristocratic families were at the forefront of the game’s development during the nineteenth century with Violet Morgan, the grand-daughter of Lord Tredegar and Constance Hill, the daughter of Sir Edward Stock Hill of Rookwood House in Llandaff, Cardiff organising matches for their female friends during the 1880s. The success of these games, plus some sibling rivalry with her brothers who were playing for the Glamorgan men’s team, led Constance in 1890 to organise a game for a so-called Glamorgan Ladies team to meet the East Gloucestershire club at their ground at Ryeworth Farm in Cheltenham on 24 September 1890.
However, Violet had to withdraw a few days before the match and, on the day itself, only seven of the selected team made it to the ground in Charlton Kings. Constance therefore had to recruit four guests from the host club. Despite missing one of their key players, Constance and her friends put up a spirited performance, with the Gloucestershire side being left with just fifteen minutes in which to score 34. Although Constance bowled with great purpose, the winning runs were struck just before the cut-off time as the home side won by ten wickets.
During the twentieth century, a group of enlightened teachers helped to spread the game, including at Howell’s School in Llandaff. From the late 1920s, the school’s fixture list included an annual match against an Old Hywelians team and the success of these matches led a group of former pupils to create the South Wales Women’s CC in 1936.
Howell’s School together with Monmouth School for Girls and the South Wales Women’s CC duly flew the flag for women’s cricket in the immediate post-war years with women’s teams also emerging at universities and schools in the Cardiff and Newport area. For a short while, there were also teams involving the nurses at Rookwood Hospital in Cardiff, as well as the servicewomen stationed at WRAF St. Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan.
This post-war surge in activity led to the creation in 1950 of the Glamorgan Women’s County Cricket Association as a fully-fledged branch of the Western District of the Women’s Association which had been formed in 1926. On 23 July 1951 the first inter-county game took place, with Glamorgan joining forces with Gloucestershire to play their counterparts from Hampshire and Dorset. The match took place at Newbridge Fields in Bridgend but ended in a heavy defeat for the Welsh contingent with Hampshire and Dorset declaring on 214-6, before dismissing the combined Glamorgan and Gloucestershire side for just 48.
The South Wales Women’s CC and Glamorgan Women’s County Cricket Association had ceased their activities by 1969 when the Welsh Cricket Association came into being and subsequently organised matches for a Wales Women’s team. But their exploits are still fondly remembered by their participants, including Jill Matthews whose recollections can be heard on the Museum of Welsh Cricket’s latest podcast – click here to listen https://audio.buzzsprout.com/hi1dgk6nus2qxy33tbm55yt7zdsk?response-content-disposition=inline& A special display, containing items kindly loaned to the Museum by both Jill as well as Howell’s School, and Sophia Smale, is also being assembled by the Museum’s staff to celebrate the forthcoming milestone in women’s and girls’ cricket in Wales.