Indeed on May 2nd they won at Egerton, lost to Lever Bridge at the Hacken ground on June 20th and, apparently having acquired a home ground, played return fixtures against these teams. Sandwiched between these games on July 11th Bradshaw played Sixteen of the District, "at the Bradshaw Ground".

So from the humble beginnings of the Bradshaw Hall and Bradshaw Works sides of 1868 and 1869, to the formation and heyday of Bradshaw Cricket Club in 1870 and 1871, Bradshaw cricket had staggered to a halt by the end of 1874, and no mention can be found in the three Bolton newspaper journals of any cricket played in the village, for the remainder of the eighteen-seventies.

The various Bradshaw sides of the late eighteen sixties would almost certainly have played on the ground behind the House Without A Name, and the Bradshaw Cricket Club in its autumnal years of 1873 and 1874 at the Moss Hill ground.

A report of the 1927 flooding of Bradshaw in the Bolton Journal & Guardian said the village was flooded from two sources; the Slack Lane Brook and the brook which drains Moss Hill. This latter brook runs under New Heys Way along the bottom of the school playing-fields and into a culvert under the roadway by the Conservative Club. Moss Hill, according to locals, extends upwards from the Conservative Club in a direction through the school. Hamers duck or poultry farm sited at Moss Hill stood around the area which is now The Coppice. Just where the cricket ground was is unknown, maybe a flat area where Bradshaw Meadows comes onto New Heys Way, but this is only a guess.

If William Smith's memory serves him correctly, and the cricket club did play for three years at the Moss Hill ground, then the matches of the two glory years of victories and brass bands were played on the former ground, now probably housing Lea Gate Close, and it was because of its withdrawal, and perhaps a forced move to inferior quarters, that brought about the Clubs demise, when this land in turn was denied them.

Notable cricketers of that bygone age, who represented Bradshaw's first cricket club recorded for posterity, were;

"The night was fine and there was a cricket practice going on (a strange occurrence in Bradshaw). Notwithstanding, there was a very fair meeting."

Thus began the report of the Temperance Society in the Bradshaw Church Magazine of June 11th 1884. The probability is that this practice was taking place on the land to the east of the old Bradshaw day school and including what now serves as the Conservative Club car park. The six cottages known as School Row standing on part of this site were not built until later, in 1889.

Miss Lizzie Ormrod, who at 97 is Bradshaw's oldest inhabitant, recalls being lifted by her father onto the surrounding wall to watch cricketers playing on this plot of land.

Unfortunately the pioneering days of Bradshaw Cricket Club seem irretrievably lost. An existing anomaly is that the fixture card of 1904 states the club was established in 1880, and all the fixture cards until 1929 bear this information, although from 1916 the word "established" is replaced by "founded". The 1930 card then shows the club to have been founded in 1884.

Whilst it would seem likely the compilers of the 1904 fixtures should be nearer the truth, perhaps it was because of some research done in 1930 with an eye on the jubilee year, that the club is now accepted to have been formed in 1884. This is certainly borne out by the Temporance Society scribe to whome a cricket practice would hardly have been a 'strange occurrence' had cricket been in evidence in Bradshaw from 1880.

So the cricket practice observed on that faraway June evening was almost certainly being held by the founder members of the present Bradshaw Cricket Club, who were soon to move from this, their first ground.

What evidence then is there of Bradshaw cricket in the eighteen-eighties? In 1880 the Bolton Evening News shows on April 24th Bradshaw Choiristers scored 12 against Windsor's 40, but no further mention is made of a Bradshaw side until 1882, when on July 1st Harwood Juniors scored a victory over Bradshaw Juniors by 83 runs to 19. In May 1883 Harwood Silver Star, playing at home, won by 42 runs to 7 against a Bradshaw Selected Eleven.

It is however in the inaugural year of 1884 the the B.E.N. reports a Bradshaw team without any appendage. Playing away on May 17th and scoring 50 (A. Beswick 20, H. Howarth 17) Bradshaw lost to Haulgh Wesleyan's 93. It could be that this is the first recorded match of the present Bradshaw Cricket Club.

In the same year, June 14h saw Bradshaw Silver Star 73 (Bateson 36) getting the better of Wellington United 28, and on June 28th the Bolton Chronicle gives the result St. Augustine 47 - Bradshaw 38, whilst lastly, for July 12th, the B.E.N. records Claremont 56, Bradshaw United 31.