The history of Manly Oval
According to the late Mr. F. Trenchard-Smith, a former honorary secretary of the Club and a person to whom the Club owes a great deal for providing much of the information about the Club's very early days and about the Oval in particular, the site upon which the Oval now stands was, in the early 1800's, a dairy farm. The farm, in due course, was purchased by a Mr. Thomas Adrian, the grandfather of one of the Club's best-known players, the late Bruce Adrian, and he converted it into a recreation reserve and on a portion of it built a hostelry called the Ivanhoe Hotel. The recreation reserve he called Ivanhoe Park, and cricket was played on the Park on a concrete wicket covered with matting.

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