Gloucestershire County Cricket Club

Gloucestershire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Gloucestershire. There is uncertainty about the exact date of the club's foundation, due to a merger with another club, but 1870 is generally accepted. The club played its first major match in June of that year. It was founded by the Grace family and W. G. was its first team captain. With that association, Gloucestershire has had major status since inception: i.e., classified as an unofficial first-class team by substantial sources from 1870 to 1894; classified as an official first-class team from 1895 by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and the County Championship clubs; classified as a List A team since the beginning of limited overs cricket in 1963; and classified as a major Twenty20 team since 2003.

The club plays its home games at its headquarters, the Bristol County Ground, in the Bishopston area of north Bristol. Each season a number of games are also played at the Cheltenham cricket festival held at the College Ground, Cheltenham. In recent years, matches have also been played at the Gloucester cricket festival at The King's School, Gloucester.

Gloucestershire

Gloucestershire (ⁱ/ˈɡlɒstərʃər/ GLOSS-tər-shər; abbreviated Glos.) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean.

The county town is the city of Gloucester, and other principal towns include Cheltenham, Cirencester, Stroud, and Tewkesbury.

Gloucestershire borders Herefordshire to the north west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north east, Oxfordshire to the east, Wiltshire to the south, Bristol and Somerset to the south west, and Monmouthshire to the west.

History

Gloucestershire is a historic county mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the 10th century, though the areas of Winchcombe and the Forest of Dean were not added until the late 11th century. Gloucestershire originally included Bristol, then a small town. The "local" rural community moved to the port city, (as Bristol was to become) and Bristol's population growth accelerated during the industrial revolution. Bristol became a county in its own right, separate from Gloucestershire and Somerset in 1373. It later became part of the administrative County of Avon from 1974 to 1996.

Gloucestershire (UK Parliament constituency)

The constituency of Gloucestershire was a UK Parliamentary constituency. After it was abolished under the 1832 Electoral Reform Act, two new constituencies, West Gloucestershire and East Gloucestershire, were created.

Gloucestershire was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England, then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1832. It was represented by two Knights of the Shire.

Boundaries

The constituency consisted of the historic county of Gloucestershire, excluding the part of the city of Bristol in the geographical county. Bristol had the status of a county of itself after 1373. Although Gloucestershire contained a number of other parliamentary boroughs, each of which elected two MPs in its own right for part of the period when Gloucestershire was a constituency, these were not excluded from the county constituency. Owning property within such boroughs could confer a vote at the county election. This was not the case, though, for Bristol.