Gerard Hodgkinson

Gerard William Hodgkinson OBE MC* (19 February 1883 – 6 October 1960) played first-class cricket for Somerset between 1904 and 1911. He was born at Clifton, Bristol and died at Wookey Hole, Somerset. He was also the plaintiff in a celebrated literary libel case in the 1930s and a decorated soldier and airman who saw service in both the First and Second World Wars.

Hodgkinson's family owned and operated the Wookey Hole Paper Mill, which was established in 1610. Handmade paper is still produced there from raw cotton. In the early years of the 20th century, the mill employed 200 people, and local caves on the river Axe on the property had been known from early times, but the discovery in Victorian times of an extensive network of linked caves turned the business increasingly into a tourism one. The family home was Glencot House, a mock-Jacobean pile completed in 1887 and now a luxury hotel. Hodgkinson's maternal grandfather was Richard Philpott, who played for Victoria in the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia, but lived most of his life in England.

Gerard Hodgkinson was educated at Eton College and then joined the family business. In 1904, he made the first two of 19 first-class cricket appearances for Somerset as a right-handed middle- or lower-order batsman. He was not successful in his 1904 matches for Somerset, nor when he reappeared in two games in 1906. In 1907, he played six times for the county, the most appearances in a single season, and made 49 in the match against Worcestershire, his highest to that point: this was the match in which Bert Bisgood, making his first-class debut, scored 82 and an unbeaten 116, the first time a Somerset batsman made 100 on debut. Hodgkinson did not play for Somerset in 1908 or 1909, but returned for four games in 1910 and in his first match of the season, against Gloucestershire he made the highest score of his career. Coming in with Somerset at 134 for six wickets, he hit 99 before his partner for a last-wicket stand of 68, Jack White, was out, leaving him a run short of a century. He never reached such heights again in first-class cricket: that was his only score of more than 50, though in the match against the Indians in 1911 he made 44 in the first innings and 41 in the second. He did not appear in first-class cricket after the 1911 season.