Sheffield & District Chess Association Established 1883 |
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04/08/2021 PS to University of Sheffield Chess Society: Current vs 1970s Alumni
The result of an on-line Sheffield University Current vs 1970s Alumni match played 04/08/2021 was reported earlier.
Recently, Jon Nelson happened upon an article, dated 15/12/2022, posted by Richard Hughes on the SU Alumni website at https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/alumni/news/life-boards-chess-sheffield-1970s. Apart from supplying the later-played Oliver West (Current) v Richard S Hughes (Alumni) game played six days after the first 6 boards were played, this includes a sort of university-chess mini-autobiography by Richard, and recent photographs of him (facial features perhaps vaguely familiar 36 years on) and John Walmsley.
The article omits to mention some things of interest. Back then the SU chess club had its own room in the union building on Western Bank. Bizarrely, that Chess Room was very close (if not co-incident with – difficult to work out) the site of the one-time abode of Sheffield’s strongest 19th-century chess-player Edmund Thorold. Richard himself once lived in a room at an address in Nether Edge which was once the abode of the secretary of Sharrow Chess Club, on whose lawn an annual pre-season match was played between the President’s team and the Secretary’s team. Richard Stormont Hughes, to give him his full name, was, as the surname hints, Welsh-born, in the North Wales slater-quarrying town of Bethesda, 5 miles SE of Bangor. (Where “Stormont” came from is unclear.) After leaving university, Richard worked for some time for Derbyshire County Council, where he would lend out the Council’s money, often making for the Council in the interest on just one transaction more than his own annual salary! After moving to London, he came to be listed in “Who’s Who in the City”. He has been a director of various investment and asset companies. |