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Post-War Rebuilding
After the Second World War, rugby football resumed with Blackheath combined with their old friends and rivals Richmond because the Rectory Field ground was not available, having been used as an anti aircraft barrage balloon site as part of the defences of London during the blitz.
The first post war game on September 22nd, 1945, saw some of Blackheath's players in the unfamiliar Richmond strip with the opening game against Northampton being played at Richmond. Next year the Club returned to Blackheath with a match against Guy's Hospital on 28th September, 1946 with a side captained by J.G.W. Davies, continuing where he had left off, captaining the side in the final season before the war.
With the Rectory Field being shared, both the London Irish Club for several years, the Club then entered a long rebuilding period. Highlights from the post-war period include the 1951 Festival of Britain matches staged at the Rectory Field, when a game was played within the spirit, Rules and dress of 1862 as a curtain raiser for a commemorative international match.
Other highlights were:
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2. The retirement of Brigadier H. L. Glyn Hughes in 1955. Known by everyone in the Rugby world as "Hughie", he was President of Blackheath for 25 years and was President of the Barbarians from 1955 to 1973.
3. The centenary season's captaincy of John Williamson; the winning of Scotland's Gala Sevens in 1957 and the Middlesex Sevens in the centenary year of 1958.
4. The centenary season's match against the Barbarians at the White City Stadium on 4th March 1959, won by the Baa Baas by only 21:8, even though they outnumbered the Club by 13 international players to one!
5. The first Women's England v Scotland International Rugby Match. In March 1992 and in line with the Club's pioneering tradition, Blackheath staged the first Women's England v Scotland international match on the heath and centred around The Princess
of Wales as part of a Festival of Rugby.
Commemorative plaques marking the founding of the Club in 1858 were unveiled by the then Lord Mayor of London, Sir Brian Jenkins, G.B.E. and Mickey Skinner, Blackheath Club captain and England World Cup International.
The Princess of Wales continues to be a popular Bass Tavern and there is a Blackheath Rugby Bar full of memorabilia to mark the special relationship between the pub, the Club and the game of rugby football that has lasted for so long.
6. Blackheath's South African tour in 1993 - just a year before the end of apartheid - involved an historic match against Zwide United, the only all black team in the first division of the Eastern Province Rugby Union. The Club's side was the first foreign touring team to play the township side.