“A Yorkshire wicket has fallen, and one of Yorkshire’s best men is out.”
Nearly a century has passed since those words were uttered at the funeral of England cricketer Roy Kilner, whose untimely death in 1928 shook the sporting world.
Though time has blurred the details of his remarkable career, his family is determined to bring his story back to the forefront, reminding modern cricket fans and communities alike of the enduring legacy left on the pitch.
This is the story of a Wombwell lad from a mining community whose talent, popularity, and impact went beyond the boundary of the sport.
“My dad always said to me, ‘never forget what he did’,” says Roy’s great-niece, Pamela Megretton. Pam’s grandparents were Roy’s in-laws, so she grew up listening to stories of great uncle Roy.
Roy’s cricketing career saw him catapult from a 14-year-old playing in a colliery squad with his dad and uncle to making his Test debut for England ten years later.
One of the finest all-rounders of his era, Roy played in nine test matches in South Africa and Australia and did the cricket double (1,000 runs and 100 wickets) four times.
But the sport he’d loved from being a boy would ultimately lead to his demise. He contracted typhoid while on a third visit to India, having been invited by the Maharaja of Patiala to teach cricket.
He passed away at Barnsley’s fever hospital at Kendray on 5th April 1928, aged 37.
Although he only had a relatively short innings, Roy lived a full and happy life.
“They called him the laughing cricketer because he was always smiling. He was really charming and got on with everyone,” says Pam.
His admiration was seen first-hand at his funeral, where 100,000 people lined the streets of his hometown, having walked for miles to pay their respects. You couldn’t move in Wombwell Church for mourners, two vehicles were needed to transport the number of wreaths laid, and a thousand people stood at his graveside for his burial.
That Easter weekend in April 1928, Wombwell said goodbye to its most famous son, who’d learnt his craft on the cricket field at Mitchell Main Colliery.
Cricket ran deep in Roy’s family, rooted in the working-class traditions of their mining community. His father Seth and uncle Irving were capable cricketers, and all seven of his brothers took to the game too, making cricket as much a part of family life as the pit.
West Yorkshire-born Seth Kilner played for Huddersfield club Lascelles Hall in his younger days before moving over the border to Barnsley for work. He was an engineer at Mitchell Main and soon found his place in their cricket team.
He struck up a friendship with Irving Washington whose father, William, was general manager of the pit. Irving had played for the colliery’s first XI since he was 15, before getting a call up to play for Yorkshire at 17. Sadly, his playing days were cut short aged 23 after he developed tuberculosis, but he remained in the sport as president of the Mexborough and District league for many years.
Seth went on to marry Irving’s sister, Mary Alice, and the couple moved into a cottage opposite Irving’s off Netherwood Road not long after Roy was born in 1890. Later, Seth became the landlord of the Halfway House on Barnsley Road, aka the White Rose public inn.
Roy was the second of 11 Kilner children – seven boys and four girls – and almost all of them went on to have a sporting connection in some way or another. The lads played cricket, as well as other sports, and three of the girls married cricketers.
While Roy became the family’s shining star, younger brother Norman also enjoyed an illustrious career. After spells as Yorkshire’s twelfth man, Norman went on to be a batsman for Warwickshire before becoming an umpire then a coach at Edgbaston.
Cricket was in the Kilner blood.
Their childhood days were spent playing cricket from morning until night. They’d play on the gravel football pitch, with a makeshift bat made from a fence paling and a stowaway ball that had been hit over the fence by the private cricket club players.
As a teenager, Roy earned his place in the Mitchell Main first team where he was subsequently spotted by Yorkshire CCC. He played his first county game at 19 in 1910 for the second team, before moving into the first team the following season.
At Yorkshire, Roy played alongside the likes of Wilfred Rhodes, George Hirst, Schofield Haigh, and Alonzo Drake.
When the First World War broke in 1914, Roy and his teammate, Major Booth, enlisted together in the Leeds and Bradford Pals – some of the first professional cricketers to join the forces.
The pair were stationed at Colsterdale in North Yorkshire and were given leave a few weeks later to return to Barnsley for Roy’s wedding. He married Annie Camplejohn, a Darfield girl, with Major Booth as his best man.
For the first part of the war, the Pals were posted to Egypt, where Roy was injured and returned home for a short period. They were then sent to the Western Front in France, but tragedy struck when Major was killed in action on the first day of the Somme, 1st July 1916.
Roy was also caught up in the onslaught, but luckily escaped with his life save for a shrapnel wound to his wrist. Another period of convalescence on home turf followed, this time in Lancashire where he found himself playing for Preston North End under the pseudonym Smith, possibly to avoid detection.
In 1917, Roy was hit by more heartbreak when his older brother Bernard was killed in Ypres aged 27.
One positive to come out of the war was the birth of Roy and Annie’s first son, Roy junior. A second son followed in 1921, named Major after Roy’s comrade and best mate.
After the war ended, sport returned to normal, but the Yorkshire cricket team was without Major Booth, George Hirst who’d retired, and Alonzo Drake who died due to ill-health.
The team’s bowling strength had been weakened, and Roy, with his slow left-hand bowling, was deemed most suitable to step in. Over the following years, he developed his skills, helping his county claim three successive championships between 1922 and 1924.
It was also in 1924 that Roy made his England debut in a test match at Edgbaston against South Africa. Despite a lacklustre performance, he found himself selected to tour Australia that winter.
The following summer season was yet another of Yorkshire’s golden years, claiming their fourth county championship – and a special one for Roy as a benefit match was held in his name. The three-day event was record breaking, with over 71,000 people in attendance and a total of £4,106 raised – about £290,000 in today’s money.
There was no cricketer as popular as Roy Kilner in 1925.
He’d also caught the attention of Sir Bhupinder Singh, the Maharaja of Patiala and captain of the Indian cricket team. He first invited Roy over to India in the winter of 1922-23 as a coach, along with Wilfred Rhodes.
Roy played in several first-class matches and enjoyed himself enough to return the following winter.
However, on the third invitation in 1927, Roy was reluctant to accept, according to his sister Mollie. He and his wife were having a new house built in Sandal and he was looking forward to moving to West Yorkshire with his family.
In spite of his feelings, Roy set sail for India in October 1927, but his departure was marred with the death of his beloved uncle Irving the following day. There had been no bigger supporter of Roy than Irving, and this undoubtedly clouded his trip to India.
It was suggested afterwards that Roy was depressed. He recorded all his scores on his bat to present to his two boys and wrote a letter to Yorkshire teammate Abe Waddington in past tense, as though he never expected to play for his county again.
Perhaps it was a premonition of what was to come.
He fell ill two weeks before his return to England while travelling from Marseille. By the time the boat reached Southampton, it was obvious he was very sick. Having refused treatment in London, he was taken by ambulance back to Wombwell.
Arriving in Barnsley on Tuesday 27th March, he was taken to Kendray Fever Hospital where he was diagnosed with enteric fever, thought to have been caught from eating oysters. His family spent many a day by his bedside, but his condition deteriorated and he passed away on the evening of Maundy Thursday, 5th April.
Easter weekend was a sombre one as the nation mourned the loss of a great all-rounder.
“It’s like being told that some genial Yorkshire breeze has died and will never again blow over the faces of men and refresh them,’ wrote the sportswriter Neville Cardus at the time.
His funeral procession was led by Wombwell Town Band, St John Ambulance corps, and Wombwell Church Lads’ Brigade. Annie and their two sons walked behind the hearse, with Roy’s Yorkshire teammates acting as bearers.
Two years after the funeral, the Australian cricket team travelled from Bradford to Wombwell to place a wreath on Roy’s grave. In those present was Sir Donald Bradman, the man who, some 60 years later, would go on to write the foreword for ‘The Laughing Cricketer of Wombwell’, a book written by Mick Pope’s in 1990 to mark 100 years since Roy’s birth.
Although the two never played against each other, Roy had an impact on a young Donald. His mother promised to buy him a new cricket bat if he made a century, and he selected a Roy Kilner bat made by WM Sykes of Horbury.
He chose it for its unusual typeface branding, Roy’s full name beginning and ending with capital Rs. Don saw it as the Rolls Royce of bats and ultimately used Sykes bats throughout his career to become the greatest batsman of all time.
A second book by Mick Pope is in the pipeline for the centenary of Roy’s death in a few years’ time.
After spending over 20 years researching her family history, Pam is now looking at ways to commemorate the centenary of his death in 2028. His bat already hangs in Wombwell Church and there’s a road named after him just off Barnsley Road, almost opposite the family’s old pub. But how good would it be to have a schools’ cricket tournament or festival in his honour?
“His photos shouldn’t just be locked away in a drawer. I want to keep his story alive.”
