is the home ground of Amersham Cricket Club, which has played at the ground in two periods from 1856 to 1886 and from 1905 to present. The ground has been used for minor counties matches by Buckinghamshire in both the Minor Counties Championship and the Minor Counties Twenty20. Buckinghamshire also played one List A one-day match when there when they were permitted to play List A cricket, playing against first-class opposition in the form of Glamorgan in the 1972 Gillette Cup. A combined Minor Counties South team also played five List A matches there in the Benson & Hedges Cup between 1973 and 1977. Recent history The mansion remained the ancestral home of the Tyrwhitt-Drake family until the Second World War, when the house was requisitioned as a maternity hospital for evacuated pregnant women from London; some three thousand children were born there, including lyricist Sir Tim Rice in 1944. Following the war the house seemed destined to become one of the thousands of country houses being demolished, until a local conservation society, the Amersham Society, assisted by the Council for the Protection of Rural England fought a prolonged battle to save the house: eventually a preservation order was put on the building preventing its demolition. Although inhabited in parts, the building fell into a state of neglect through the 1960s and was eventually purchased in the early 1970s by local property developer Richard Watson. His company, Landstone Limited, completed a comprehensive renovation of the building and converted unused parts into further apartments. Shardeloes today is a complex of private flats; the principal reception rooms are preserved as common rooms for the residents. References External links Further information Houses completed in 1766 Country houses in Buckinghamshire Amersham Grade I listed buildings in Buckinghamshire Palladian architecture Cricket grounds in Buckinghamshire Grade I listed houses Grade II* listed parks and gardens in Buckinghamshire Buildings by Stiff Leadbetter