By Paul Holland
October 25 2002

JOSEPH BECKETT WOSTINHOLM

He was appointed 'Secretary of the Bramall Lane cricket ground' in 1864 (1862 has also been mentioned). A Sheffield man, born in 1836, he was also a stockbroker and estate agent and ran Bramall Lane and the infany Yorkshire County Cricket Club from his offices in Norfolk Row. His first major tasks were the building of the boundary walls and enclosing the Shoreham Street side of the ground and when this was completed, it meant that the ground had become one of the few enclosures in the country where admittance, and consequently suprised payment, was only possible through gates.

Wostinholm was a cricket enthusiastic and he did perhaps more than any other man, save Lord Hawke, to fashion the success of the County Club. When the decision was taken in March 1889 to form a Football Club at Bramall Lane, Wostinholme automatacly became the secretary but he only had mild enthusiasm for the game (which he had probably never played) and the work appertaining to the new Football Club was essentially done by his assistant, Henry Herbert Stones.