The Clayton Cup Competition commenced as a Cricket Competition for Salesbury and its surrounding villages.  It is engraved as Salesbury Memorial Hall Cricket Cup, but it appears that early in its life, the responsibility for arranging a programme of matches was transferred to the Salesbury Cricket Club.

The magnificent trophy was provided by Mr Clayton, believed to be a local resident.

The first reference to the Clayton Cup Competition in the earliest Minutes Book, in the possession of the Club, appears for a Special Meeting immediately following a weekly Selection Committee meeting, on Tuesday 20 May 1930.

The recorded minute reads:

The Rules were read to the representatives of the following:

Mellor, Ramsgreave, Ribchester, Langho, Clayton-le-Dale, Balderstone, Nomads and Wilpshire.

Then the Draw being as follows:

Balderstone or Wilpshire v Salesbury

Mellor v Langho

Ribchester v Ramsgreave

Nomads v Clayton-le-Dale

A few weeks later, before any of the matches had been played, a request from a representative of Salesbury for permission to field in their team “a player not resident in Salesbury” was rejected, with the advice that the request should have been made to the earlier meeting of representatives of the villages, at which the Rules had been read out.

The Competition made a profit of £6-10-101/2.  The shillings and pence were given to the groundsman and the £6 shared between the Cricket Club and the Memorial Hall.

The Club Secretary was instructed to send Mr Clayton (the donor of the Trophy) a statement of the result of the Competition and to invite him to a ‘Social Event’, to present the Clayton Cup.

The above are the earliest records held by the Club concerning the Clayton Cup Competition, but it is possible that the Competition may have taken place on one or more occasions prior to 1930.

The sharing of profits with the Salesbury Memorial Hall, obviously was linked with the trophy having its origins in the Salesbury Memorial Hall. 

It is reasonable to assume that the Competition continued to take place each year, in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in 1939, but the Club does not have any Minutes Books for the period between 1936 and 1951.

In March 1956 reference was made to ‘entries for the Knock-out Competition’, which probably was for the Clayton Cup Competition.  In April 1957 arrangements were made for a meeting of representatives to discuss the arrangements for the Clayton Cup. It seems that the Competition did take place, as Mr C R Davies of the East Lancs Cricket Club, agreed to attend the Final on 16 July and present the trophy.

On reviewing the 1958 Competition, the Committee concluded that ‘for some time the Competition had brought very little, if any, revenue to the Club, was costly and an embarrassment to the Club, at a period of the season when friendly matches would be more enjoyable and more profitable’.

The Competition was therefore discontinued, but subsequently re-launched in 1961, and ‘confined to the teams representing the original four parishes (Salesbury, Wilpshire, Clayton-le-Dale and Ramsgreave) and Club members’.

The wording of the Minute in the September 1958 Committee Meeting implies that the Competition had run for several years in the ‘fifties’, despite there being no specific reference to it in the Club Minutes until 1957.

In March 1961 the Committee considered draft Rules for the Competition and decided that the Rules should be printed in the 1961 Season Fixture Card.  Ten matches enabled each team to play all the other four teams on a ‘league basis’, with the Champions then playing a final match against ‘The Rest’; a team made up of players from all the other four teams.  Matches were played on mid-week evenings, between mid-May and early July.

The same format was adopted for the 1962 Season, with the concession that Ramsgreave would be permitted to have ‘outside assistance’ (ie select players outside the residential qualification) if they would otherwise be unable to field a side.

It was also decided to form a sub-committee to govern the Competition, with one representative from each of the five competing teams.

In 1963 the Competition was opened up to other Clubs in the district, with Salesbury 1st XI and 2nd XI teams taking part.  Invitations were issued to the following Clubs: Ribchester, Hurst Green, Brockhall, Langho Colony, Roe Lee Mills, Blackburn Northern, East Lancs, Hospitals, Whalley, Great Harwood and Ribblesdale Wanderers.

At least eight applications were received, and the Competition was won by the East Lancs Club.  In reviewing the Competition, which was deemed to have been very successful, it was noted that there had been some excellent games, and in particular, the Final, which was considered to have been one of the best matches ever played on the ground.

In 1964 Salesbury played East Lancs in the Final, a subsequent Minute implying that East Lancs won.

In 1965, however, Salesbury CC won the Clayton Cup for the first time in the current format and the 2nd XI had also performed well.  In 1967 Darwen were invited to participate as Whalley had declined the invitation.

In 1967 the Club accepted an offer from the East Lancs Cricket Club to supply and have fitted to the plinth of the trophy, a silver band to replace the shields bearing the names of the winners. The trophy, however, does not have winners’ names on it.

In 1968 the standard of teams being fielded by participating Clubs was raised, presumably with regard to the fact that Clubs were invited to field teams of a standard approximating to the Chorley and District League Club standard.  In particular the East Lancashire Club was reminded that players who were established in the Lancashire League would be regarded as ineligible.

The Competition continued up to and including the 1970 Season, but particularly in view of the proposed major project of ‘levelling the ground’, it was decided that the Competition be suspended for the 1971 and 1972 Seasons.

In 1975 a sub-committee was established to consider the possibility of a Clayton Cup Competition involving four or five fixtures.  This led to a tentative plan for a series of matches in mid-June 1976, but it seems that nothing ever developed, and the Clayton Cup Competition era therefore seemed to have come to an end.

For a number of years the whereabouts of the fine trophy were not known, but its reappearance in 1986 led to Bill Blackman suggesting that the Competition might be re-launched. His son John rose to the challenge and in July 1987 the Competition Final took place, with the following four teams having participated: Wilpshire North, Wilpshire South, Salesbury & Clayton-le-Dale and a team made up of non-parishioners. The Competition appears to have continued thereafter, but the bad weather of 1990 prevented any matches from being played, but John Blackman gave an assurance that he would organise the 1991 Competition.

During the fifties and sixties, the various formats of the Clayton Cup Competition had been an important element of the Club’s calendar of cricket matches, eagerly awaited and appreciated, despite some ‘low points’.  The temporary suspension of the Competition during the major ground re-construction project, may have had some part to play in its temporary demise, possibly coupled with the fact that the trophy ‘went missing’ for a while.