The St Lawrence Ground is a cricket ground in Canterbury, Kent. It is the home ground of Kent County Cricket Club and since 2013 has been known as The Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence, due to commercial sponsorship. It is one of the oldest grounds on which first-class cricket is played, having been in use since 1847, and is the venue for Canterbury Cricket Week, the oldest cricket festival in the world. It is one of the two grounds used regularly for first-class cricket that have had a tree within the boundary, in this case the St Lawrence Lime.
Capacity at the ground was increased to 15,000 in 2000, and four One-Day International matches have been played there, one each in 1999 (part of the 1999 Cricket World Cup), 2000, 2003 and 2005. The ground was the venue for the first day/night County Championship match, played as a trial in September 2011.
History
The ground was first established in 1847 on farmland owned by the fourth Baron Sondes. The land was the site of the St Lawrence Hospital, a leper hospital founded in the mid-12th century, and immediately to the south of the Old Dover Road, which follows the line of the Roman road that ran from Dover to Canterbury. A Tudor manor house had been built on the site after the dissolution of the hospital in the mid 16th century and this had been demolished by 1839. In the 18th century the house was known as St Lawrence. The 1847 Cricket Week saw the first important matches played on the ground (it became a first-class venue in 1864), with Kent playing England and the Gentlemen of Kent playing the Gentlemen of England.
Initially, the St Lawrence ground was used for cricket only during the annual Cricket Week, being pasture land for the rest of the each year.. Improvements began to be made to the ground in the 1870s after the amalgamation of the East (Beverley) and West (Maidstone) Kent Cricket Clubs, forming the current Kent County Cricket Club. The ground was purchased for £4,500 by the county club from the 2nd Earl Sondes in 1896, a purchase partly funded by public subscription, and became Kent's headquarters, although it was only used for county cricket during the Canterbury week until well into the 20th century.
Prior to the purchase of the ground there were few permanent structures on it, accommodation during Cricket Week being provided in tents.
thumb|right|Kent versus Lancashire in 1906, by [[Albert Chevallier Tayler. The painting shows the Pavilion as it stood in 1906.]]
Kent's first County Championship title in 1906 was marked by the commissioning of a painting of the team playing Lancashire on the ground. The painting, Kent vs Lancashire at Canterbury by Albert Chevallier Tayler, depicts a view of the ground from the Nackington Road End with Colin Blythe, Kent's greatest pre-war bowler, bowling from the Pavilion End of the ground. The Pavilion can be seen clearly behind Blythe. The painting was hung in the Pavilion until 1999, when insurance payments proved too expensive. It was loaned to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and hung in the Long Room at Lord's. It was permanently sold to MCC in 2006 and remains in the Lord's Pavilion, with a copy hanging in the St Lawrence Ground Pavilion.
Kent won three more County Championships in the years before World War I. War was declared during Canterbury Week in 1914, although cricket continued until the end of the season and matches were moved to the ground from Dover due to wartime activity. During the war, the ground was used by the military and occupied by the Field Ambulance detachment of the South Eastern Mounted Brigade. Horses were stabled along the south team of the ground, including in the Iron Stand. During World War II the ground was used as an alternative civil defence control centre. The Frank Woolley Stand was built adjacent to the Pavilion in the 1920s, and the Colin Cowdrey Stand added in the 1980s. Significant redevelopment was undertaken at the ground during the early 21st century, during which land was sold for housing.
Cricketing feats to have taken place on the ground include the first triple century scored in top-class cricket, by WG Grace in 1876 playing for the MCC against Kent. As of 2018 it remains the only triple century to have been scored on the ground. Kent leg-spinner Doug Wright took his seventh first-class hat-trick on the ground in 1949, a world record that remains to this day. Six of Wright's hat-tricks were taken while playing for Kent, although only the last was taken on the ground.
Kent have played more than 950 top-class matches on the ground, including over 550 first-class games. It was the venue for the first day/night County Championship match, played as a trial in September 2011, and regularly stages day/night limited-overs matches. It has been used for four men's one-day international matches and for women's international cricket Test matches and one-day matches, as well as for games by England Lions and age-group teams. In 2014, the ground was the venue for the first cricket match to be played between the Vatican and the Church of England.
The ground has been known as The Spitfire Ground, St Lawrence since a 2013 sponsorship deal between the club and local brewery Shepherd Neame. The deal gave naming rights to the ground for a ten-year period to the company, which has been a long-term sponsor of the club and brews a beer named Spitfire. The Supermarine Spitfire is associated with the Battle of Britain, much of which was fought in the skies above the county in 1940 and after which Kent's limited-overs team is named.
Lime tree
thumb|right|The St Lawrence Lime in 2003
The playing surface of most cricket grounds are devoid of any trees or shrubs. The St Lawrence Ground was an exception: when the ground opened in 1847 it was laid out around a pre-existing lime tree, which was then about 40 years old. Only four cricketers are known to have hit the ball over the tree to score a six: Arthur 'Jacko' Watson of Sussex in 1925, the West Indies' Learie Constantine in 1928, Middlesex's Jim Smith in 1939, and Kent's Carl Hooper in 1992.
The tree was diagnosed with fungal heart rot in the 1990s, so was pollarded to encourage new growth. This reduced the height from over to around . On 7 January 2005 high winds caused the trunk to snap in two, killing the 200-year-old tree and leaving a stump. Wood from the dead tree was made into mementos and sold to supporters. Redevelopment of the north side of the ground in 2017 forced the boundary to be brought forward, so it is no longer possible for the tree to be part of the playing area.
Stands and structures
thumb|Map of the ground with stands and structures labelled.
thumb|The stands and the replacement lime tree in 2017
The ground includes five stands, four of which are named after famous Kent cricketers. These provide seating for over 2,500 spectators. Outdoor, uncovered seating provides another 3,400 seats. Woolley, who played for the county between 1906 and 1938, is the county's leading run scorer and has made the most appearances for the team. He played 64 Test matches for England and was an inaugural member of the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009. The stand was refurbished in 1972 and in 2012 Kent launched an appeal to raise money to construct a new stand to replace the existing structure.
The Colin Cowdrey Stand was built in the 1980s, partly financed by the sale of mementos after the pollarding of the lime tree that stood on the ground, and formally named after Kent's longest-serving captain during Canterbury Week in 1992. It is a three-storey stand with a conference room, club shop and outside seating for members on the ground floor. The Cornwallis Room, an indoor viewing area with catering facilities named after Stanley Cornwallis who captained the team in the 1920s, is on the first floor and the Harris Room, a function room with outdoor seating used for hospitality purposes and named after Lord Harris, one of the club's most important personalities, is on the second floor.
The Les Ames Stand, closest to the Nackington Road entrance, has no public seating. Since redevelopment it consists of a public bar on the ground-floor level with 16 hospitality boxes and the main scoreboard directly above. The scoreboard, which dates from the 1930s, is one of only two manual scoreboards still in use at any major county ground in England or Wales.