The Sam Ham Trophy (c. 1900s–1910)
Catalogue Reference: WCA-DIA-RSA-001
Object Type: Silver trophy (wrestling prize), approximately 10 inches in height
Date of Origin: c. 1900s–1910
Place of Origin: Jeppestown, Johannesburg, South African Republic / Transvaal Colony
Place of Discovery: Gas Lane, Camborne, Cornwall, England
Date of Discovery: 2010 (during road improvement works)
Discoverer: Paul Richards, excavator operator
Inscription: “Wrestling Cornish Style won by Sam Ham, Manor House, Jeppestown S.A.”
Original Recipient: Sam Ham (c. 1880–1946), of Condurrow, near Camborne, Cornwall
Current Custodian: Reunited with Ham’s grandson; intended for display in the Camborne mining district
Description of the artefact
The Sam Ham Trophy is a silver prize of approximately 10 inches in height, engraved with the inscription ‘Wrestling Cornish Style won by Sam Ham, Manor House, Jeppestown S.A.’ The trophy was unearthed in 2010 by Paul Richards, an excavator operator working on road improvements in Gas Lane, Camborne, Cornwall. Richards spotted the glinting silver whilst operating his machine. The circumstances of its burial beneath the roadway in Camborne are not fully understood, though the trophy’s return to Cornwall from South Africa, and its subsequent loss or deposition in the ground, likely occurred at some point after Ham’s return from the Witwatersrand mining districts in the early twentieth century.
The inscription’s reference to ‘Manor House, Jeppestown’ is significant. Jeppestown is a suburb of Johannesburg, situated in close proximity to the Witwatersrand goldfields. Cornish wrestling tournaments on the Rand were frequently held at hotels and public houses owned or patronised by Cornish miners. Tripp (2014, pp. 208–210) documents tournaments at the Stars and Stripes Hotel in Fordsburg, the Redruth Hotel in the same suburb, and the Port Elizabeth Hotel, all of which were owned by Cornishmen and served as focal points for the transplanted community. The Manor House at Jeppestown appears to have functioned in a similar capacity. The trophy’s designation of the wrestling as being ‘Cornish Style’ is consistent with the terminology used in South African reportage of the period, distinguishing the jacketed, standing grappling style of Cornwall from other forms of wrestling then practised in the colony.
Context: Sam Ham and the Cornish in South Africa
Sam Ham was born in approximately 1880 at Condurrow, a village in the parish of Camborne, Cornwall. He was a miner who, like thousands of his countrymen, emigrated to South Africa following the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886. The Cornish were the largest group of skilled miners in South Africa during the 1890s and early 1900s; it has been estimated that approximately 25 per cent of the white male workforce on the Rand was Cornish (Dickason, 1978; Dawe, 1998; Tripp, 2014, p. 208). In 1895 alone, some 2,000 migrants departed Cornwall for South Africa, drawn by what were then the highest wages offered by any mining companies in the world (Payton, 1999; Tripp, 2014, p. 208).
A report from 1910 identifies Sam Ham of Condurrow as the middleweight champion of Cornish wrestling in South Africa, with Littlejohn of Gunnislake as the heavyweight champion (Tripp, 2014, p. 209). Ham was eventually defeated for the middleweight title by Alfred (‘Barney’) Williams, a miner from Beacon (Tripp, 2014, p. 209). The Wikipedia list of Cornish wrestlers records Ham’s weight as 165 lbs and his dates as c. 1880–1946. The trophy from the Manor House, Jeppestown, evidently commemorates one of Ham’s victories during this period on the Rand, though the precise date remains uncertain.
The broader context of Cornish wrestling in South Africa is well documented. Dawe (1998) confirmed that Cornish miners introduced the sport to Kimberley and elsewhere from the 1880s onwards. Following the Boer War (1899–1902), wrestling tournaments were revived, with the Transvaal Leader reporting in 1905 that prominent wrestlers had recently returned from visits to Cornwall. Tournaments continued on the Rand into the 1920s, with the Randfontein Cornish Wrestling Association still holding annual competitions. However, by 1910, many Cornish miners had begun to leave South Africa, driven by economic depression and the mine owners’ policy of de-skilling the workforce (Tripp, 2014, pp. 208–210). It is likely that Ham returned to Cornwall at some point thereafter, bringing his trophy with him to Camborne, where it eventually found its way underground in Gas Lane.
Significance
The Sam Ham Trophy is a remarkable piece of material culture for several reasons. First, it is a rare surviving physical artefact of Cornish wrestling in South Africa, a tradition which, despite being well documented in newspaper reports and secondary literature, has left relatively few tangible traces. Dawe (1998) noted the general paucity of source material for the Cornish in South Africa, making every surviving object of considerable evidential value. Second, the trophy’s inscription directly connects the formal organisation of Cornish wrestling on the Rand—its venues, its terminology, and its champions—to the broader phenomenon of what Payton (1999) has termed the Cornish ‘overseas.’ The so-called ‘Cousin Jacks’ carried their sporting traditions with them wherever they settled, and trophies such as this one represent the institutional scaffolding of those transplanted communities (Tangye, 1995; Tripp, 2014).
Third, the circumstances of the trophy’s discovery—unearthed by an excavator during roadworks in a Cornish mining town—carry an almost archaeological quality, with the object emerging from the very ground of the community that produced the man whose name it bears. That the trophy was subsequently reunited with Ham’s grandson speaks to the enduring connections between diaspora families and their Cornish roots. Its intended display in the local mining district ensures that it will serve as a public monument to the global reach of Cornish wrestling and the miners who sustained it. As Acutt (2024, p. 13) has argued, the preservation of such artefacts is essential to maintaining the ‘unbroken chain’ connecting the sport’s present practice to its deep historical inheritance.
References
Acutt, J. (2024). Westcountry wrestling: Official textbook. The Devonshire Wrestling Society.
Dawe, R.D. (1998). Cornish pioneers in South Africa. Hillside Publications.
Dickason, G.B. (1978). Cornish immigrants to South Africa: The Cousin Jacks’ contribution to the development of mining and commerce, 1820–1920. A.A. Balkema.
Payton, P. (1999). The Cornish overseas. Alexander Associates.
Tangye, M. (1995). Sportsmen Cousin Jacks. Cornwall Today, 2(2).
Tripp, M. (2014). Cornish wrestling: The history of an ancient Celtic sport [Doctoral thesis, University of Exeter].
Tripp, M. (2023). Cornish wrestling: A history. Federation of Old Cornwall Societies.