Dandelion Paddock was a

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

ground in Dent de Lion west of

Margate Margate is a seaside resort, seaside town on the north coast of Kent in south-east England. The town is estimated to be 1.5 miles long, north-east of Canterbury and includes Cliftonville, Garlinge, Palm Bay, UK, Palm Bay and Westbrook, Kent, ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

. Sir Horatio Mann organised a number of matches there in the 1790s.

Location

The paddock was sited in the grounds of Dent de Lion, also known as Dandelion, in Garlinge, now a suburb located south-west of Margate.''The Casket'', No. 25, 28 July 1827 – se
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/ref> The estate was established around a former manor house in the 12th or 13th century by the family of Dent de Lyon. It was owned by

Charles James Fox Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled ''The Honourable'' from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the arch-riv ...

for many years until his death in 1806. The only remaining evidence of the estate is a 15th-century gatehouse.

Matches

The grounds had been converted into a resort and tea garden by the time cricket matches were held there and had become very popular with residents of Margate and nearby

Ramsgate Ramsgate is a seaside resort, seaside town in the district of Thanet District, Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2001 it had a population of about 40,000. In 2011, according to t ...

. The earliest known match at Dandelion Paddock was in September 1789 when Mann's East Kent XI played a team from the Isle of Thanet. In September 1795, it became a first-class venue when Mann staged three successive matches featuring his own XI. Two further games took place in 1796.

Arthur Haygarth Arthur Haygarth (4 August 1825 – 1 May 1903) was a noted amateur cricketer who became one of cricket's most significant historians. He played first-class cricket for the Marylebone Cricket Club and Sussex between 1844 and 1861, as well as num ...

, ''Scores & Biographies'', Volume 1 (1744-1826), Lillywhite, 1862Dandelion Paddock, Margate
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-12-08. The ground is last known to have been used on 15 September 1806 when Lord Frederick Beauclerk's XI defeated Edward Bligh's XI by 53 runs. Kent also used the New Cricket Ground in Cliftonville to the east of Margate for one first-class match in 1864.Grounds Records in ''Kent County Cricket Club Annual 2017'', pp.210–211. Canterbury:

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

References

1789 establishments in England Cricket grounds in Kent Defunct cricket grounds in England Defunct sports venues in Kent English cricket venues in the 18th century History of Kent Margate Sports venues completed in 1789 {{England-cricket-ground-stub