Mike Smith, Curator of THM (left) discusses the
Old Creightonians HC archive with Simon Lawton-Smith (right).

At The Hockey Museum (THM) we receive at least one collection each week, but not many have a twist in the story like this one.

A recent visit by Simon Lawton-Smith brought us the club records of the Old Creightonians HC, a very active club in Middlesex for over fifty years. Originally the ‘Old Boys’ of Kilburn Grammar School, when the school closed and they ran out of ‘Old Boys’ to solely sustain player numbers – a not uncommon scenario – they changed the name to simply Creightonians HC. Although now disbanded, the club lives on with regular social and golfing gatherings. With their records lodged with THM, however, the name will live on in annals of hockey.

The twist in the story came whilst showing Simon around the Museum. We mentioned our 1908 Olympic gold medal to which he responded, “My family has one of those!” Simon’s grandfather, Herbert Smith, was in the gold medal-winning side of 1908, not for hockey but for football. Like us at THM, the family keep the medal in a safe but what a wonderful twist that 110 years on the stories of these two successes should come together.

Mike Smith, 28 August 2018