The MCC museum is the oldest sports museum in the world dating back to 1953 and takes you through 400 years of cricket history with paintings, artefacts and old equipment. All the great players are featured, WG Grace, Bradman, Botham and current England favourite Andrew Flintoff. There is the famous stuffed sparrow which was killed in flight by a cricket ball in 1936.
But the star attraction is the ashes urn dating back to 1882 when England were beaten on home soil for the first time by Australia and a newspaper printed an obituary to English cricket stating that the body would be burned and the ashes taken to Australia. Later that year England went to Australia and after beating them captain Ivo Bligh made a speech about retrieving the ashes of English cricket. He was later given a small urn full of ashes that he bought back to England. The original urn now sits in in the MCC museum and a replica is played for in England vs Australia “Ashes” cricket matches every couple of years.
