The club's earliest minute books have sadly been lost. Nevertheless, there is evidence that chess players were formally meeting together in Leeds as early as 1820.

Yorkshire chess's premier historian Steve Mann reports that the Manchester Central Free Reference Library has a copy of a book called Chess Essays, which has the inscription "Leeds Chess Club, Novem. 1820, No. 5," in faded but clearly legible letters on the flyleaf.

It is unknown if the first club had a constitution, but they were certainly organised enough to have the beginnings of a club library. Even today, the club has an excellent and extremely valuable library, with many first editions and an almost complete collection of bound BCMs. The library remains a big part of the club's identity and heritage.

There are records in the Leeds Mercury and the Liverpool Kaleidoscope of a correspondence match between the two cities in 1825. (An over-the-board encounter would have involved a gruelling five-day round trip by coach and horses.) We won that particular War of the Roses is the main thing. More on the match including a game at:

mannchess.org.uk/events

Records indicate that Leeds Chess Club was officially founded in 1834. It is not known whether the first club lapsed, or whether it simply grew and developed into the modern club, which by 1834 was organised enough to form a constitution.

Either way, we're still here today so if you fancy a game ...