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Yorkshire Chess History |
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Contents: |
Ronald Wilson Ives and Jacoba Ives |
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(Photo courtesy of Ingrid Ives)
Non-Chess Life
Ronald Wilson (“Ronnie”) Ives was born on 10/07/1923, in Pontefract, to Joseph Percival Ives (born 12/01/1884, Dewsbury; died 1972, Pontefract) and Lucy Daphne Wilson (born 29/10/1892, Pontefract; died 1962, Pontefract), who had married in Pontefract in 1919. There were three other children, Beatrice Daphne Ives (born 22/02/1920, Pontefract), Gladys Diana Margaret Ives (born 19/11/1921, Pontefract) and Eric Stuart Ives (born 1925, Pontefract; married 1955, Pontefract, Mary McNulty).
The 1939 Register found the family living at Carleton Park Avenue, Pontefract. Father Joseph at that time was a colliery agent/representative.
Ronnie served in the Second World War with the 7th Armoured Division, which, after its activities in the Western Desert, acquired the nickname “Desert Rats”. He was later stationed in the Netherlands with the Army Educational Corps, and it was there that he met wife-to-be Groningen-born Jacoba (“Cobie”) Rosema. After travelling back to Ronnie’s native Pontefract, where his parents still lived, the two got married at St Michael’s Church, Carleton, Pontefract, on 14/02/1948.
Back in civvy street, Ronnie got into banking, sooner or later to be employed at a bank in Horbury, where he was recorded as work in 1952.
In 1954 Ronnie and Cobie moved to 11 Sandway, in the Crossgates district of Leeds, where were born their three daughters: Margaret P Ives (1956), Beatrix D Ives (1958), and Ingrid D D Ives (1960).
Death
Unfortunately, Ronnie developed a brain tumour, and died in Leeds in 1964, at the age of only 40.
Cobie passed away after contracting Coronavirus in 2020, aged 97, leaving three daughters, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Chess
Ronnie was already a reasonable chess-player before getting married, and he taught wife Cobie to play, although she stated herself to have had no previous interest in the game. At local club level, the two would travel together from Pontefract to weekly meetings of Woodhouse Chess Club in Wakefield.
Ronnie was strong enough to play for Wakefield in the Woodhouse Cup and to play for Yorkshire in county matches. He played when he could, work permitting, in the Yorkshire Chess Association’s annual Easter Congress and also congresses further afield, including ones such as the Devon Open Chess Congress, the Bognor Regis Congress and the British Chess Federation Congress.
Cobie was not of the same strength as Ronnie, but nevertheless was able to pick up a prize here and there in lower-strength sections of congresses, and liked entering the Yorkshire Easter Congresses, though seems not to have warmed to club chess.
In those days, lady chess-players were the exception rather than the rule and “Mrs. J Ives”, as she was typically recorded, usually found herself the only lady competitor at chess matches and congresses.
This “only lady competitor” attribute was commonly mentioned in newspaper reports, the more so perhaps because husband Ronnie was himself a chess columnist in the Yorkshire Evening Post and will have supplied copy to other papers as well.
Jacoba appears to have become the first lady member of a “Yorkshire” chess team by playing in the 1953 Bradford CC friendly match v rest of Yorkshire arranged to celebrate Bradford CC’s centenary. Strictly, this Yorkshire team was not an official representative county team in a formal inter-county competition, but in the broader sense this very probably was a “first” as advertised in the press. (So, who was the first lady player to represent Yorkshire in formal inter-county over-the-board chess competition?)
Some cuttings from the Yorkshire Evening Post column exist preserved in Wakefield Chess Club’s records but is of only limited public availability on microfilm or as hard copy at libraries. In particular, at the last time of checking, Wakefield library held the YEP only for the period 1958 to 1975 which cuts out the earlier years of the chess column, while Leeds library held only copies from the last quarter of 1890! YEP is available at the British Newspaper Library website (to subscribers).
(The original briefer version of this webpage was written when Covid precluded trips to Wakefield, and that is yet to come.)
It is always impractical to attempt comprehensive coverage of a player’s chess career, but the following are accessible examples. (The list below and supporting links therein are “work in progress”.)
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Created 10/04/2020 |
Copyright © 2020 Stephen John Mann Census information is copyright of The National Archive, see UK Census Information |
Last Updated 25/02/2023 |