Cricket club's 162-year wait to own home ground ends

A cricket club’s wait to own the ground where they have played for more than160 years has ended, thanks to the help of a couple who won £115m on the lottery.

Sion Mills Cricket Club have played at the Holm Field – where Ireland famously beat the West Indies in 1969 – since it was founded by local mill owners in 1864.

Earlier this week, with financial support from the Kathleen Graham Trust, a charitable foundation set up by EuroMillions winners Frances and Patrick Connolly, the County Tyrone club finalised a deal for the ground.

Club secretary Simon Galloway said it was a “huge day, a momentous day for the cricket club”.

Over the last few years Sion Mills Cricket Club, he said, had been working to secure the ground’s ownership but had faced “different legal complications and checks and searches and different things”.

There had been “false dawns”, Galloway told BBC Radio Foyle’s Mark Patterson Show, and times when “we thought we were close to getting things over the line”.

But only now , he said, were “we able to sign on the dotted line.. and officially announce the purchase and ownership of the grounds after 162 years.”

Sion Mills Cricket Club club is the oldest and most successful club in Northern Ireland’s north west, founded in 1864, under the patronage of the Herdman family, the local mill owners.

It has won the North West Senior League on 28 occasions and the Senior Cup 29 times and is remembered internationally as the ground where, some 57 years ago this month, the Irish national team bowled the West Indies out for 25.

Herdman’s Mill, built in 1835 by James George and John Herdman from Belfast, once employed more than 1,000 staff.

A model village, a school and sporting facilities, including the cricket patch, were also built by the family on the site of the mill.

It ceased spinning linen in 2004 and the company that owned the mill went into receivership in 2011.

Galloway said the cricket club had fallen into “harder times” when the mill closed, adding it had to learn to “become self-sufficient”.

But not owning the ground meant Sion Mills could not apply for “grants and things that can make differences to facilities and to youth development”.

“We’re hoping now that this is obviously going to open those pathways,” Galloway said.

“That will help us build for the future and secured it hopefully for at least another 162 years,” he said.

The ground purchase is not the first time the club has been helped by Frances Connolly, who has family connections to the area.

In 2019, an arson attack at the club sparked fears over its survival.

But with her help the club did survive, and now with a grant from the foundation she and her husband set up in memory of her mother.

“We could not have done anything without the Kathleen Graham Trust and we owe a huge debt of gratitude to them for that,” Galloway said.

The Connollys from Moira, County Down, and who live in England, have given away more than half of the £115m fortune they won in 2019.

The Kathleen Graham Trust, named after Frances’ mother, is one of two foundations the couple set up after their lottery win.

‘Ambitious plans’

The cricket club is not the only local sports team to benefit from the Connollys’ philanthropy.

Sion Swifts FC, the cricket club’s next door neighbours, now also this week finalised the purchase of The Brae, the club’s home ground, with the foundation’s support

Club chairman Kevin Boyle told BBC Radio Foyle’s North West Today programme everyone at the football club is delighted.

Now “ambitious plans” are being made for new pitches, new floodlights and a new clubhouse, he said.