Will there be as much fascination in 2107 for the players of today as we have for cricketers of the Edwardian Golden Age? Will great-grandchildren sit on aged relatives’ laps and ask them what it was like to see Shane Warne or Brian Lara in their pomp? Possibly.

When Britain’s oldest man was guest of honour at the Brit Oval on Friday, all anyone wanted to know were his memories of seeing a fat, elderly man with a beard more than a century ago. Henry Allingham, who is 111 next month, is possibly the only surviving person to have seen W. G. Grace bat.

Allingham was happy to repeat the story he told Wisden last year about visiting the Oval at the age of 7 in 1903 and seeing Grace make 43 for London County, but he revealed that it was not the first time he had seen Grace.

“I was about 4 or 5 and I saw him at Leytonstone,” Allingham said. “He was big, square-built with a beard, but he walked like an old man and I recall him wearing pads that were too big for him.” Given that Grace was taller and broader than most of his contemporaries, whoever lent him the pads must have been a giant.

There is no record of Grace playing a first-class game at Leyton, Essex’s county ground, after 1898, the year before he retired from Gloucestershire to create the London County club, but Allingham may have seen him in a minor game.

“He faced a few balls and everyone gave him a big hand, but the thing I really remember is the lunch and the tea, and that there was plenty of sunshine,” Allingham said. No doubt many four-year-olds today who are lucky enough to see Ricky Ponting or Muttiah Muralitharan play also remember only the sandwiches and the weather.

Allingham, Europe’s oldest man and the sole surviving veteran of the Battle of Jutland in 1916, is severely deaf and shortsighted, but his memories of long-dead players are crisply clear. “Jack Hobbs was my pin-up boy,” he said of the Surrey and England batsman who made his Test debut in 1908. “There used to be a clock in the pavilion at the Oval and I remember Hobbs always tried to smash its face with the ball. I never saw him do it, but he had a good try.”

Allingham had ability as a rower – he won medals for sculling at the Eton regatta in 1927 – but cricket was his main love. “I used to collect cigarette cards of the great players, like Hobbs and Hammond,” he said. “I had two full sets; if I had them now they’d be worth a bob.”

As a child, Allingham traded in his stamp collection for a bat, so he could play with friends in the East London streets where he grew up, using a lamppost as a wicket, but money was tight after his father died when he was 14 months old and getting into Lord’s or the Oval to see his heroes was difficult. “Matches cost a penny, but I didn’t have that, even at the start of my working life,” he said. “I used to hang around near the end of matches to see if I could get in cheap.”

In 1930, he saved up to see the touring Australians. “I saw Don Bradman, he was marvellous,” Allingham said. “There’s never been anyone like him.”

Cricket has changed immensely in the past 30 years, let alone in the 92 years since Grace died. “The thing that is most different is the look of the grounds,” Allingham said, looking at the Oval’s large stands, video screens and electronic scoreboards. “I can’t believe this is the same place that I used to come to, but everywhere I knew has changed. The only place I recognise is the Bank of England. Take me anywhere else and I’m stumped to know where I am.”