Kent County Cricket Club in 1906
After dominating county cricket in the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, the players who made up Kent's great side of the 1840s had retired and by the 1850s the county had been reduced to often having to amalgamate with other sides to produce a challenging team. The formation of a County Club in Maidstone in 1859 and the amalgamation of this with the original Kent Cricket Club in 1870 to create the modern Kent County Cricket Club, provided the basis for re-emergence, although the club suffered from financial instability and Lord Harris's view was that Kent could not hope to compete at the level it once had throughout the 1870s and 1880s. When the County Championship was formerly established in 1890 Kent were initially able to finish only in mid table.
Kent County Cricket Club
Kent scored 803 for 4 declared against Essex at Brentwood in 1934, with Bill Ashdown scoring 332, Ames 202 not out and Woolley 172. The total took just seven hours, with 623 runs scored on the first day alone and remains, as of April 2018, Kent's highest score in first-class cricket, Ashdown's 332 runs remaining the highest individual score made for Kent. Arthur Fagg scored a unique two double centuries in the same match for Kent against Essex at Colchester in 1938, while Woolley scored over 1,000 runs for Kent in each season between 1920 and his retirement in 1938. In 1928 he made 2,894 runs for the county at a batting average of 59.06. He retired in 1938 after making 764 appearances for the county side, with 47,868 runs, 122 centuries and 773 catches for Kent - all county records.