Chandler’s Ford Chess Club History, from its origins in the various chess clubs in the Eastleigh area. By Rob Sims.
A History of Chandler’s Ford Chess Club
Chandler’s Ford Chess Club (or ‘CFCC‘) is currently located near the junction of Hursley Road and Bournemouth Road at the Chandler’s Ford Central Club and Institute. It moved here in 2015 and membership has grown steadily since then. At the start of the 2019-20 season, we had four teams competing at different levels in The Southampton Chess League.
Many of our club members can trace their own history of chess playing in the area back to several clubs that co-existed in or near the town of Eastleigh. Since the 1980s, these clubs have merged to form our current Chandler’s Ford club. During the enforced lockdown of 2020 it was suggested by one of our newer members that an attempt should be made to trace the history of our club and as a result of that request, longstanding members have produced a large amount of detail gleaned from faded battered folders and prodigious memory befitting any worthy chess player! Much of this information involves names of past and present players as well as the clubs they have represented, and the various matches played. Contributions have been collated to produce this attempt at writing the Chandler’s Ford Chess Club history, not definitively set in stone, but instead to be a piece of living, organic history that can evolve and be expanded as the club continues to develop in the future.
The Cricketers
Several of our club members would see The CFCC as a natural continuation of a club known as The Cricketers which had its origins in the mid 1980s and was based at The Cricketers Arms a large public house at the lower end of Chestnut Avenue in Eastleigh. The pub was a busy and convivial venue, and the chess club was to be found in a small room at the back of the pub near the car park. If a match was taking place, space would be limited, so casual, friendly, blitz chess playing, and analysis took place in a quieter corner of the main bar of the pub. It was possible to keep an eye on football league matches on TV in the bar and pop out the back to see how the chess league matches were progressing. Parking and getting a decent drink were never a problem at the Cricketers, but in winter, the back room which had no or very little heating that worked, could get very cold, so playing chess in coats and scarves was not unusual. Could it have been possible that drawn matches were agreed prematurely as a result of meteorological conditions?
The Cricketers first Southampton Chess League season was in 1984-85, when the one team won three matches and lost five in Division 4. The following season however saw The Cricketers with an A team in Division 2 and a B team in Division 4. By 1986-7 the A team captained by Bill Purkiss won Division 2 and the B and C teams captained by an H. Prior and Clive Cable were in Divisions 3 and 4 respectively. Clive, who was very passionate about and a great ambassador for chess was the driving force behind the early years of The Cricketers, running the club from its inception around 1984 through to the end of the 1980s, when his work took him away from the area. He was possibly a friend of The Cricketers Arms landlord who allowed the team to play for free. He was the Southampton Chess League secretary until the 1989-1990 when Malcolm Clarke took over the post. By the 1989-90 season The Cricketers A team was bottom of Division 1, but the B team won Division 2 and the C team were 4th in Division 4. Perhaps the pinnacle of The Cricketers success came in the 1990-91 season when the A team still captained by Bill Purkiss came top in Division 1 of the SCL. In that same season the B team was captained by Andy Carpenter and the C team by Patrick Pavey
Legend has it that Bill Purkiss was ‘discovered’ by the infamous stalwart of Eastleigh Working Mens Chess Club, Eddy Pitt. The discovery took place in a pub called The Crown and Eddy introduced Bill to AC Delco chess club in the late 70s or early 80s. At some point Bill made the move to The Cricketers, no doubt persuaded by the club’s founder Clive!
Other players at The Cricketers included Kevin Goater, John Wilkinson, Dave Taverner, Kevin Byard, Roger Marsh, Brian Otway, John Zastapilo, Neil Stewart, Paul Massey, John Minelly, Martin Newbury, Chris Priest, David Simpson, John Carroll, Charles Morris, A Reid and the more familiar names perhaps of some of the current members of Chandler’s Ford Chess Club – Graham Stuart, Keven Lamb, Sam Murphy and Rob Sims.
Despite the passage of time and a cold room in winter, memories of the old Cricketers Chess Club are usually fond. Patrick Pavey remembers the night that Tony Kosten, an International Master living in Chandler’s Ford, visited with his girlfriend Gyongyver Forintos, daughter of the Hungarian Grandmaster Gyozo Forintos. Tony had recently played against Vassily Smyslov a former World Champion and showed the game to the club players. The match is saved on our website if you’re interested in studying it.
Graham Stuart who used to run the old Hampshire Chess website used to visit The Cricketers for occasional chess games from the late 1980s and eventually joined the club in 1989. Graham has kindly written pen portraits of the main Cricketers Chess Club players. At different times in the mid 1980s Sam Murphy just dropped into the pub for a drink and was persuaded by Clive to join the club and play for the C team and Rob Sims called in one evening, likewise, met Clive and was signed up to play for the club! David Culliford who, in the 1980s was playing for Southampton C team, remembers playing against Cricketers teams that included Gyongyver, John Carroll and John Minelly.
By the start of the 1994-5 season there had been a change of landlord at The Cricketers Arms pub and the small chess room was being increasingly used for storage of pub paraphernalia – empty beer barrels, boxes of toilet rolls, peanuts, drinks dilapidated chairs and tables and even a dartboard! Graham recalls being told that we could play in the pub if we wanted to, but it was decided that this would not be suitable for serious league matches and a search began for another venue for the club.
Keven Lamb joined The Cricketers C team on 1st November 1994, exactly three weeks before The Cricketers found a new home at The Unity Club on Southampton Road in Eastleigh. The first ten years of the CFCC history was over but a new episode was about to begin.
Eastleigh Unity
In November 1994, The Cricketers Chess Club moved to The Unity Club located in a large building on Southampton Road in Eastleigh. Although at first keeping the name The Cricketers, that was soon replaced by Eastleigh Unity Chess Club. The Unity Club offered large rooms compared to the cupboard like space of The Cricketers! There were several rooms where league games could be played, sometimes two or three matches at the same time in one large room. Analysis, blitz games, friendlies and social chat could take place in the bar where drinks were certainly cheaper than The Cricketers Arms. Not only were the rooms large, but they were free of charge, the bar staff were friendly and there was ample free parking nearby. The venue was so good that The Hampshire Chess Championships were held there from 1995 to 1999.
There were a few drawbacks such as having to have the club night on a Monday instead of the usual Tuesday, but this seemed a small price to pay when offset against the spacious rooms and cheap drinks! However, keep fit classes were held in an adjacent room and towards the end of our stay there a couple of local rock bands had their practice nights, one of them playing their two-song repertoire on a seemingly endless repeat! Despite this the club flourished at The Unity and a regular newsletter was produced by Graham Stuart.
Being a great archivist and Hampshire Chess website organiser, Graham recorded many match results between1995 and 1998. There were a couple of local derby crunch matches between The Stoke Social Chess Club, once based at The Welcome Inn in Bishopstoke and in 1995 based at Eastleigh Working Men’s Club. These matches featured some familiar names including for Stoke Social- Mike Henbury (aka Ewokmike), Nobby George and his brothers Charlie and Dave, plus the late but infamous, aforementioned Eddie Pitt. For Unity there was Keven Lamb, Sam Murphy, John Minelly and David Simpson (ex-Toynbee where Rob Sims ran the school chess club). Thankfully the two matches that Graham reported on resulted in a win each for Stoke Social and Unity!
Graham also recorded final league positions showing varied success for the three Eastleigh Unity teams. In the 1998-9 season, second place in Div 1 for Unity A and sixth place in same Div for Unity B. In 2000-1 season Unity A were third in Div 1 after Eastleigh British Rail in first place, Unity B were third in Div 2 and Unity C third in Div 4. In the 2001-2 season, Unity A were second again in Div 1, the team made up of Bill Purkiss, Roger Marsh, Martin Newbury, John Jones, Andy Carpenter and Chris Priest. Also, in 2001-2 season Unity B were sixth in Div 1 and Unity C captained by Keven Lamb won the cup in Div 4.
Keven had quickly and adeptly become the C team captain from the mid 1990s and he recalls the challenges at the time that the shortage of regular players posed for him. Despite this he always ensured that each team position was filled by combining established club players with a few extras that he had the ability to bring into the squad for league matches. These included his sister Viv, housemate Matt Coleman and friends like Toby Whale and Andy Conner who knew how to play chess and were persuaded by Keven to do so! Keven declared that it was ‘fun’ making up the teams! Always the well organised captain, Keven kept team performance records for three seasons from 1998.
David Culliford’s first year with Unity was in the 1996-7 season when, after several successful years with Southampton during which he captained his team from Division 3 to Division 1, John Zastapilo and Kevin Byard persuaded him to defect to The Unity Chess Club. David reported on several Unity C matches in the 2001-2 season when regular players in the C team included himself, Patrick Pavey, Sam Murphy, Keven Lamb and Rob Sims.
Eventually The Unity Club finished and became a new club called Breezers. Toward the end of the 2001-2 season, band practise increased in frequency and volume, and it was decided to try and find a different venue that offered a little more peace and quiet more conducive to concentration! The Stoneham Park days were approaching and several years after we left The Unity/ Breezers Club, the building was demolished, and residential flats built on the site.
Stoneham Park
Having left The Unity Club at the end of the 2001-2 season, The Eastleigh Unity Chess Club moved to Stoneham Park a clubhouse that occupied the old A C Delco Social Club and where the defunct ACDelco Chess Club used to play in the 1970s and 80s. It was situated in Stoneham Lane the road that then connected the southern edge of Eastleigh with the northern edge of Southampton. It was opposite The Concorde Club and only a few hundred metres from The Cricketers Arms. It is believed that Unity Chess Club member Peter Eales knew the owner of the clubhouse and this link plus a swift change of name transformed the old Unity Chess Club into Stoneham Park Chess Club. We were allocated a large room that could comfortably accommodate up to about 25 people, so league and friendly matches could take place with ease. There was a bar in next room, no charges for the use of the club and parking was free.
At around the time of the Unity move to Stoneham Park, the original Eastleigh Rail club was nearing its end and several players including Malcolm Clarke and John Kooner decided to join The Stoneham Park Chess Club at the start of the 2002-3 season. A chess club member list of the time showed the previous club of the members of SPCC.
The combined forces of the ex-Unity club with the ex-BR club playing as Stoneham Park produced favourable results in the 2002-3 season. Stoneham A team selected from Bill Purkiss, Roger Marsh, Martin Newbury, Matthew Ludbrook, Andy Carpenter and Juha Nevalainen came 2nd in Division 1 of The Southampton League, Stoneham B were 5th in Div2, and Stoneham Cand D teams were both 3rd in Divisions 3 and 4 respectively.
At first Stoneham Park seemed an ideal location but the early optimism proved to be short lived. David Culliford was captain of Stoneham Park C team and recalls having difficulty explain that a chess club needed a guarantee of a relatively quiet room. The Fishing club met on the same night as The Chess Club, but the former seemed to take precedence over the latter. As the result of a clash Dave remembers at least one C team match being played on hastily arranged random tables in the main club bar along with the darts, drinking and social chatter!
One winter evening in a home match against Winchester C, David arrived to find crowds of people spilling from the clubhouse onto the grass. In astonishment he asked an official what was happening only to be reminded that it was November the 5th and the traditional A C Delco Bonfire Night and firework display. Unfortunately, nobody had informed The Chess Club, so when the opposing team turned up it was agreed to rearrange the match as it would have been impossible to play in those circumstances! By the end of the 2002-3 season, it was clear to management at Stoneham that chess players didn’t down quite as many pints as expected, and the chess club was perhaps less welcome for another season. As a result, it was decided collectively that our first season at Stoneham should also be our last!
Meanwhile The Eastleigh British Rail Club which had folded in 2001 provided a lifeline to The Cricketers-Unity-Stoneham Park chess club members and a phoenix like rebirth occurred following top-level talks between Malcolm Clarke (Mr Eastleigh BR) and Graham Stuart (Mr Cricketers). They proposed that the membership base of both clubs join forces at Eastleigh BR’s former venue The Eastleigh Railway Institute, previously known as The British Rail Staff Association club, located at the well-appointed premises on Leigh Road in central Eastleigh. A new chapter for our chess club was about to start!
Eastleigh Rail
At the start of the 2003-4 season Stoneham Park renamed themselves Eastleigh Rail and started playing at The Eastleigh Railway Institute a red brick building at the eastern end of Leigh Road. For many years this had been the home of The Eastleigh British Rail Chess Club whose history stretched back to at least the early 1950s
Malcolm Clarke had been a long-time member of the British Rail Chess Club and had been instrumental in the move from Stoneham Park. As Malcolm wrote in the Southampton Chess League circular letter at the start of the 2003-4 season, coverage of league activities was given by himself in The Southern Daily Echo where he included news, match results and anything else relevant to the local chess scene. He recommended the Hampshire Chess Association website which also supplied information on the SCL. Malcolm had taken over the chair of the SCL from Clive Cable back in 1990.
The Chess Club played in the upstairs committee room, a small room but large enough to host two league matches and to accommodate sets, boards, clocks and admin material in a couple of metal cabinets. Downstairs there was a large club room bar where friendlies could be played, and post analysis could take place. Parking was sometimes a bit cramped but there was plenty of space over the road in the Sainsbury’s car park. Sometimes, as Graham noted, there were overzealous doormen wanting to check membership but generally it was a good location, central to Eastleigh, warm in winter and with plenty of space, somewhat different to the original Cricketers Arms! In the summertime it was even possible to play outside by the bowling green. Rob Sims recalls playing Sam Murphy in the 3rd round of the Summer Tournament on a particularly warm and sunny August evening.
In the first season of 2003-4, Eastleigh Rail ran four teams, Andy Carpenter being captain of the A team in Div 1, Andy Mills captain of the B team in Div2, David Culliford captain of the C team in Div 3 and Malcolm Clarke non-playing captain of the D team in Div4. In the same season Nobby George was captain of the Eastleigh Working Men’s Club chess team that also played in Div 4. A detailed fixture list for that season is available here.
In the 12 years that the club was based here, membership grew steadily, and the club began to take on aspects of its current form. Ted Tapper joined the club in the 2004-5 season and in Spring 2008 he set up The Summer Tournament which had the effect of keeping club members playing chess through the ‘closed’ season when league matches were not occurring. John Kooner kindly donated the tournament prize which quickly became known as The Kooner Cup and a presentation dinner was organised by Mike Henbury at The New Clock Inn in Fair Oak.
Mike Henbury and Nobby George joined the club when The Eastleigh Working Men’s Chess Club ended in the 2006-7 season. Since then, Nobby has become a club stalwart while Mike sought fame in the international world of cinema, returning to the club in 2020 as the online player ewokmike!! Maha Chandar became club treasurer around 2007 and her children Manoj and Mansa joined the club in 2009. Under the watchful eye of a proud mum and sister, Manoj played his first chess game for the Eastleigh Rail A team on 22nd October 2013
Although often defeated in his first games in the A team, Manoj revealed unusual levels of resilience and his perseverance has paid off as he is now one of our stronger players.
Other members of the club at this time included Marcus Butler, Rick Smith, Guy Whitehouse, Gary Chaffey and Mark Brooke-Smith all of whom have now left the area.
While at The Railway Institute the idea of chess club curry evenings was reintroduced by David Culliford in 2005. Originally the idea of Graham Stuart in the previous decade, they started as an end of season get together usually in The Jewel In The Crown Indian restaurant or The Bright Water Inn, on Shirley Road in Southampton. As a nod to past habits, Dave selected The Bright Water for the first of the new get togethers, but then we shifted to venues closer to The Railway Institute such as The Wagon Works near the station and since the move to The Central Club, The Sunrise Restaurant in Bournemouth Road Chandler’s Ford.
David also instigated an occasional series of friendly chess evenings of varying format between Eastleigh Rail and Salisbury chess clubs, occurring every two years on average and alternating between the two clubs’ homes. Another notable initiative was the chess ladder started by Nobby George in about 2015. This has always proved popular and between 15 and 20 club members play in it each year.
In the first season of 2003-4, Eastleigh Rail ran four teams, Andy Carpenter being captain of the A team in Div 1, Andy Mills captain of the B team in Div2, David Culliford captain of the C team in Div 3 and Malcolm Clarke non-playing captain of the D team in Div4. In the same season Nobby George was captain of the Eastleigh Working Men’s Club chess team that also played in Div 4. A detailed fixture list for that season is available here. Team positions within the league varied between 2003- 2010 as the following chart shows
| Year | Team | Division | Position /total teams |
| 2003-4 | A | 1 | 2 / 5 |
| B | 2 | 4/7 | |
| C | 3 | 2/6 | |
| D | 4 | 3/6 | |
| 2004-5 | A | 1 | 3/6 |
| B | 2 | 1/6 | |
| C | 3 | 3/6 | |
| D | 4 | 2/6 | |
| 2005-6 | A | 1 | 2/6 |
| B | 1 | 6/6 | |
| C | 3 | 5/7 | |
| D | 4 | 3/6 | |
| 2006-7 | A | 1 | 2/6 |
| B | 2 | 4/6 | |
| C | 3 | 3/6 | |
| D | 4 | 3/8 | |
| 2007-8 | A | 1 | 5/6 |
| B | 2 | 5/6 | |
| C | 3 | 6/6 | |
| D | 4 | 4/8 | |
| 2008-9 | A | 1 | 4/6 |
| B | 2 | 5/6 | |
| C | 4 | 2/6 | |
| D | 5 | 2/5 | |
| 2009-10 | A | 1 | 3/6 |
| B | – | – | |
| C | 4 | 3/5 | |
| D | 5 | 2/5 |
Eastleigh Rail continued to be a dynamic club over the twelve years it was based at The Institute with the four teams competing in the SCL. Graham Stuart’s report on the Eastleigh Rail B team v University A in October 2003 reveals much about the philosophy of Southampton League chess at the time as he congratulates Uni A on their win in a well-balanced match.
Another interesting report was written by Malcolm Clarke and appeared in The Echo in the 2010-11 season. It features Eastleigh Rail C playing and beating Winchester D team. The Eastleigh team comprised Mike Henbury, Mark Brooke-Smith, Maha Chandar and Mike’s son Joseph (aged 11) on boards 1-4 respectively.
Chandler’s Ford
In the late Spring of 2015, Nobby George, previously a chess captain of his school and member of The Welcome Inn chess club in Bishopstoke, then Bishopstoke Social Club, then Eastleigh Working Men’s Club and finally Eastleigh Rail proposed a move to The Chandlers Ford Central Club in Bournemouth Road Chandler’s Ford. Despite initial reticence by some members, most agreed and this is now our current excellent and welcoming home and hopefully will continue to be so for many years to come. We have a continually growing membership which has proved very generous when we needed to raise money to update our old clocks for newer digital ones for which Nobby provides valuable tuition!
We may no longer have a team in the top two divisions, but we have four enthusiastic teams that compete in Divs 3,4 and 5 and whose members may compete in any of the four internal tournaments. These include the long-standing Summer Tournament with the prize of the highly coveted Kooner Cup, the popular and annual ladder tournament overseen by Nobby, the more recent Knockout Cup introduced by Steve Dunleavy who organises the event every Spring and who kindly donated the prized trophy and most recently, The Book Prize Tournament initiated by Peter Przybycin and open to players who have ECF grades below new rating of1450.
Chandler’s Ford Junior Chess Club
Another new initiative that has arisen since our move to Chandler’s Ford has been Maha Chandar’s single handed creation of an active Junior Chess Club. Although not a junior section of our club it is a de facto junior training group held at the old Fleming Park Sports Centre now named Places Leisure Centre. Maha has been ably assisted by her own chess playing children Manoj and Mansa and occasionally by David Culliford and Don Creasey. The Junior Club had about 25 players in March 2020 just before lockdown and it will hopefully restart when the Covid pandemic is over.
The impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic
From early April 2020 with the enforced lockdown due to coronavirus, over the board chess became impossible. Graham Stuart took the initiative to start an online club for Chandler’s Ford Chess Club members. He chose the excellent Lichess server for this purpose and most members have embraced the new world of speed chess online. The lichess club is the basis for our online rapid-play weekly tournaments set up by Keven Lamb, the Book Tournament that run by Peter Przybycin, the chess ladder run by Nobby George, Steve Dunleavy’s Knock-Out Tournament, and the Summer Tournament games organised by club stalwart Malcolm Clarke. Two significant events in the club’s history that have occurred during lockdown are the welcome return to the club of previous members such as Kevin Byard, Patrick Pavey, John Zastipilo, and Mike Henbury now playing in regular online tournaments and the women’s international matches played by Rose Saunders and Maha Chandar.
The chess club’s friendly nature
Since locating at The Central Club, many members have referred to the friendly nature of the club. Steve Dunleavy who had tried the Southampton Chess Club, found the Chandler’s Ford club more to his liking and has made many friends since joining back in 2016. Not only has Steve introduced the Knockout Tournament but he has set up and captained a D team for the last two years, admitting competitively that he wanted a fourth team in the club so that he got a chance to play in some league matches himself. He has now achieved this! Steve, who enjoys the occasional pint after a game as well as the curry nights, has encouraged a process of casual mentoring of newer players by more experienced and stronger ones and this is certainly having a positive affect within the club.
Don Creasey joined the club back in 2010 when we were at The Railway Institute, was delighted to receive a chess bag and score book for one of his ‘significant’ birthdays something he felt would not have happened at one of his previous clubs.
Acknowledgements
When seeking contributions from current club members for this brief history of the club two notable contributors were Rose Saunders and Peter Przybycin whose comments are attached here.
Many members wanted to thank Nobby George for encouraging the move to Chandler’s Ford, Keven Lamb for all his chess encouragement and hard work he puts in to running the club’s online games and website and of course I would like to thank Graham Stuart and David Culliford for detailed records of the past clubs, Graham and Keven for lots of photos and the ‘non-playing’ Malcolm Clarke and his prodigious memory, without which, much of this history could not have been attempted.
Rob Sims