MCC Bicentenary Gates - Lord's Cricket Ground, St John's Wood Road, London, UK - UK Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The plaque, that is located on a pillar between the gates, reads:

M.C.C. Bicentenary Gates
Presented May 1987 by
The Duke of Westminster
in memory of his uncle
Charles Lyttelton, 10th Viscount of Cobham
President M.C.C. 1955

The EPSN Cricinfo website (visit link) tells about the bicentenary:

"There is no phrase more neatly expressive of the role of MCC in the evolution of the game than Sir Pelham Warner's well-worn description: a private club with a public function. It may well have been Plum, too, who coined the aphorism that MCC reigns but does not rule. In common parlance, while it has been accepted as the final seat of authority, it has not thrown its weight about. Pray notice the change of tense. We must write now in the past tense to the extent that, although Marylebone Cricket Club remains the maker and custodian of the Laws, just as it has been since its formation just two hundred years ago, and although it still provides the ICC, according to custom, with its venue, its Chairman and its secretariat, the Club has had since 1968 no more than a guiding voice in the governance of English game in its various aspects, both amateur and professional.

When at that time Mr. Harold Wilson's Labour administration agreed at last to make Government grants available to sports and games, they could scarcely treat with a private institution, however venerable and respected. Hence, in consultation with Mr. Denis Howell, the Minister with special responsibility for sport, MCC made a voluntary devolution of its tacitly accepted though never explicit powers. The Test and County Cricket Board, formerly The Advisory, would in future manage and control the first-class game, and a new body, the National Cricket Association, would be answerable for all aspects of the amateur game, with special emphasis on the coaching of the young. Both these bodes, along with MCC, would contribute equal representation, a third each, to a court of appeal known as The Cricket Council. The gist of all this is no doubt apprehended more or less by the average devotee of Wisden; but it is an outline perhaps worth defining afresh in this celebratory bicentennial year.

The future of MCC will be what its successive committees make of a wonderful heritage. Theirs is the ground, unique historically, perfectly placed geographically to remain, as it has always been, the natural headquarters of the game. When the spotlight turns on to Lord's this coming summer, it will show an arena better equipped to accommodate members and public than ever before. The handsome new Mound Stand complements and follows the contours of the recently built Tavern Stand, right up to the open decks of free seats at the Nursery End. As the eye moves anti-clockwise, the Grand and Warner Stands continue the line of the boundary round to the centrepiece of the Pavilion, that four-square monument to Victorian self-assurance which seems likewise to be the very emblem of cricket's permanence as a national institution.

Behind the Pavilion (which itself has been greatly modernised within and to which a library of fitting size and dignity has been appended), and contiguous with the tennis and squash courts and the Memorial Gallery, opened in 1950, the TCCB and NCA are now comfortably and independently housed. So, alongside the Harris garden and in a separate building, is the Middlesex CCC. Away on the Nursery ground stands the MCC Indoor School, through which many thousand cricketers of all ages have passed since its opening ten years ago. Add to the picture the modern Tavern alongside the Grace Gates, and it strikes one afresh how greatly over the last two decades the face of Lord's has changed. What we must be truly thankful for is that the transitions have been wrought without loss of character. One cannot visualise further significant building in the immediate future, and so in 1987 Lord's can face the years ahead confidently as it is. Thank heaven it will always be a cricket ground-- surely the cricket ground; never a stadium."