The Barlow Cup

Treasured Friendship

The Story

The Bury & District Table Tennis League play an annual championships and have done for over 100 years. Amongst many events is the mens open singles event.

In the late 1930s Bill Barlow and his good friend Vernon Peatfield had become notable Table Tennis players recognised both locally and at national level and were featured in a few magazine articles from 1938 and 1939. Vernon & Bill were also doubles partners and forged a formidable team making many finals together. In addition to being doubles partners they were frequently opponents. Bill won the open singles tournament in Bury in 1937/38 and in the 1938/39 season Vernon & Bill were opponents in the open singles final with Vernon being victorious. Bill also won the doubles with J.Taylor in 1939.

Bill won many other championships elsewhere including being Yorkshire Junior Champion in 1938/39.

In 1947 Vernon Peatfield presented a cup to the Bury League in honour of his great friend who had been killed during the war. The cup bears the following inscription.

The Barlow Cup: Men’s Singles Championship.
Presented to The Bury and District Table Tennis League by A.V. Peatfield.
In memory of W.T. (Bill) Barlow who gave his life for his country on 12th August 1944 whilst serving with The Royal Air Force

The league were keen to restore the trophy and hoped to find a modern day descendant of either the Peatfield or Barlow family to present the restored cup to that years champion and as such an investigation was started.

The Investigation

We quickly put together a family tree for Bill Barlow but it was noted he had no children so the search focused on Vernon Peatfield.

This proved challenging as no records could be found for Vernon afer the 1950s so a worldwide search was launched and yielded a possible match in Port Macqurie in Australia.

After lengthy investigation a telephone number was obtained and a call placed and it was indeed the right family. Vernon had passed away a few years earlier but his wife was the person who answered the call and was thilled to hear the trophy was still being contested each year. As it turned out she had met Vernon through table tennis and together they had won the Bury mixed doubles event in 1947.

She had kept contact with a relative in the UK and this ultimately led us to a modern day descendant who did indeed present the restored trophy to the champion at the conclusion of the season.

In addition to the above it was felt that Bill deserved further recognition so the website air crew remembered were contacted to find a little more about Bills passing. They conducted further research and produced a memorial page for Bill which can be read by clicking here: Bill Barlows Story Another family finder success story.

This search was successful for a number of reasons:

Firstly having the names Bill Barlow & Vernon Peatfield and a location for them in the late 1930s allowed us to check the 1939 registry and produce family trees and It was also successful because of our skills in hunting down worldwide records.

If you have a long lost relative you would like to find please or story you would like to get to the bottom of please contact us on the form below including as much detail as you have as well as your contact details and we will be in touch to see if we can help you have a similar positive outcome.