1946 – 2026
See our Feature on the move to Wanstead House.
Celebration of the move to Wanstead House
Wednesday, 2 October 1946
We have now located the match details of the original Celebration Match of 2 October 1946, for the Club’s move to Wanstead House. (See in the heading “Wanstead Hall”? This is either a typo, or at this early stage, the idea is to rename “West Ham Hall” to “Wanstead Hall” only for this to be further modified to “Wanstead House”.)
This match, apparently, was not without its difficulties as one of the original Wanstead team players, A.W. Daniel, was not able to attend, so what was to have been a 13 board match, turned into a 12 board affair only by dint of Roy Wagstaff standing down and a couple of re-pairings: Knifton moved from Board 6 to Board 3 and Grenfell switched sides to play on Board 6 for Wanstead, leaving Board 5 void. Wanstead had White on odd numbered boards. Over 13 Boards Wanstead would have had the extra White; by leaving Board 5 void, the colours were equalised and the players retained their original colours.
We know that Board 5 was Void because, had Boards 6-13 moved up a board to close the gap, then on Board 7, John Hunnable, would have been playing White. As it is, the photographic evidence shows that he is playing Black and is therefore still on Board 8 as originally declared. There was clearly some shuffling around on re-pairing and allowing for there being not a lot of space; accordingly, the layout of the boards was no longer in a logical sequence.
Cleaned up table…
| Bd | Wanstead | v | Woodford |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | J Mason (W) | 0-1 | Hawson J B |
| 2 | A A Craswell | ½-½ | J H B Bennett |
| 3 | I C Knifton | ½-½ | D Le B Jones |
| 4 | T H Acton | 1-0 | H A Chappell |
| 5 | – | Void | – |
| 6 | G F Grenfell | 0-1 | R T Shaw |
| 7 | T G P Cocking | 0-1 | Rev H W Pike |
| 8 | J C Hunnable | 1-0 | A O Bovington |
| 9 | A WIlson | 1-0 | J T H Atkinson |
| 10 | P T Jenkins | ½-½ | H Hutchins |
| 11 | L Escott | 0-1 | S G Elvy |
| 12 | T A Stickland | 1-0 | H D Kutner |
| 13 | A T Wickham | 1-0 | W J N Titmas |
| 6½-5½ |
80th Anniversary of the 1946 Celebration Match
Friday, 2 October 2026
The teams in the 1946 fixture (see top of this page) were Wanstead v Woodford according to Members’ place of residence. With our current membership being more diverse, we structured the two teams under the names of the Club’s co-founders. Teams were selected by Mark Murrell, who came up with two identically matched teams, both with an average rating of 1525.
At the time of the original match in 1946, the grading system had yet to be invented, so there is no way of comparing the two sets of players. But there are at least four features which the two matches, 80 years apart, have in common: i) They were both played over 13 boards; ii) in both there was a player who didn’t turn up; iii) both matches were decided by a single point; iv) the Hunnable in each match, won.
| Board | Team: John Hunnable | v | Team: Roy Wagstaff |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Swales, Andrew 1881 (1661) [W] | 0-1 | Spearman, David 2020 (2029) [B] |
| 2 | Murrell, Mark RA 1873 (1798) | ½-½ | Collyer, Alex 1851 (1804) |
| 3 | Whitton, Terry D 1834 (1853) | 0-1 | Colclough, Ryan 1815 (1688) |
| 4 | Hunnable, Ian D 1801 (1850) | 1-0 | Meadows, Pete 1648 (1652) |
| 5 | Chu, Ray 1613 (1487) | 1-0 | Wilson, Michael GA 1632 (1526) |
| 6 | Sharman, Jay 1546 (1474) | 1-0 | Jacob, Huw D 1506 (1425) |
| 7 | Hutcheson, Ivan 1499 (1420) | 0-1 | Manikandan, Maadesh 1502 (1437) |
| 8 | Dohon, Almas 1476 (1382) | 1-0 | Segat, Davide 1474 (1326) |
| 9 | Tshimuanga, Christian 1455 (1062) | 0d1 | Pang, Toby 1438 (1403) |
| 10 | Jestico, John V 1374 (1325) | 1-0 | White, Nigel 1418 (1330) |
| 11 | Podaru, Nathan 1216 (906) | ½-½ | Kattimani, Arjun 1348 (995) |
| 12 | Read, Paul 1230 (1143) | 0-1 | Lachani, Vishal 1103 (1326) |
| 13 | El-Hosaini Floyd, Rumi 1027 (928) | 1-0 | Dayaratne, Dilshan 1070 (876) |
| Average: 1525 | 7-6 | Average: 1525 |
Link: to the Anniversary match on ECF LMS