* Charlton Minute Book found * 150 year-old Notts Co seats re-purposed * Evidence of oldest Reading document * Great Save joins the FSA *
Developing relationships
An important element of The Great Save is developing relationships and networks. We’re very pleased to announce that The Great Save has become an Associate Member of the Football Supporters Association (http://thefsa.org.uk) and we hope to encourage them to include a football heritage preservation award as part of their Annual Awards.
We recently made another trip to Sheffield to deposit three more cases of books to the Sheffield Football Library and Archive.
Roger will be speaking at the International Football History Conference in Cardiff on 7 June on the subject of professional football in the South before 1914, and how and why the Southern League failed to join up with the Football League in that era. Conference details available here:
Inspiring each other – Maidstone and Ipswich
Great Saver John Bunyard’s eye was caught by a page in the Ipswich Town programme on the day the Stones put the Tractor Boys out of the FA Cup. It tells of how Tim and Liz Edwards of the ITFC Heritage Society were inspired a visit to John’s Maidstone: United in Football exhibition (2019) to produce a similar series of banners portraying the history of their club.
Saving your seat – for a century
This heart-warming story from the Football Club Museums WhatsApp group caught our eye and is re-produced by kind permission of Lee Cumberpatch:
‘At Notts County we had probably the oldest stand in the League until its demolition in 1978. It was in use for many years at Trent Bridge cricket ground (mid-to-late 1800s) then floated across the River Trent and erected at Meadow Lane ready for the ground opening in 1910.’
‘It was deemed unsafe so came down in July 1978. Many of the original wooden bench seats then sat in dry storage for over 42 years in an old cinema a few miles from the ground until discovered, covered in thick soot and dust.’
I researched them and visited a few times before confirming they were actually the original seats. I purchased dozens of them and was able to reunite some very old Notts County fans and relatives with their actual Season Ticket member seats from that stand. People turned them into tables, display features, garden furniture etc. It was a great one-off project.’
‘I cut them to various sizes so that more fans could own a piece of history. There’s now more than 40 pieces scattered in homes around the UK and Europe. Some have sent back pictures of how they’ve been put to use.’
On the Great Save blog we’ve talked before about recycling old football stuff, notably programmes turned into collages and tables, but what Lee’s done here takes it to a whole new level – keeping alive pieces of Nottingham sporting heritage already over 150 years old!
‘Secondary’ finds – the oldest Reading FC document
We’d call a ‘secondary’ find a reported historical artefact, something that went missing from its own time but re-appears almost at random, decades later. A supporter was musing through the FA News for July 1961, as you do, and was stopped in his tracks by a ‘photostat’ copy of the original 1871 rules of Reading FC. Bizarrely no text explanation was offered as to why this was re-printed here but even a copy was a valuable addition to the record, as the whereabouts of the original have long been unknown. Equally randomly from a scrapbook, Roger came across a secretary-manager’s reminiscences of the 1890s in series of articles he penned for the local paper in the 1920s.
Club Corner meets Saved!
Paul Baker from the Charlton Athletic Museum tells the story of a couple of Great Saves
Few clubs outside the “big six” have a physical museum but Charlton are one of them. A registered charity, and an entirely fan-run and fan-funded initiative (although the club kindly give us large display and storage rooms at the Valley at no charge) we rely on donations from fans to grow and fund the collection. While it is time-consuming and costly to maintain a museum, one big advantage is that many fans now see it as the right place for valuable and historic items to come home.
Back in December 2022, as Charlton celebrated 30 years back at The Valley, a Charlton Athletic Museum trustee at one of the many anniversary events got chatting to Andy Soloman, who had been heavily involved in the Valley Party and the return to The Valley both as a campaigner and as a photographer.
In the late ’80s, while the Addicks were still in exile, Andy set up a reminiscence group and published two booklets of recollections from older Charlton fans and players going back to the 1920s. Andy mentioned that he still had the cassette tapes of those interviews and offered them to the museum when he returned from a long trip overseas.
In early 2024 we remembered that we hadn’t followed up so we re-contacted Andy who was more than happy to bring the tapes into the museum. Great Save One! He casually mentioned he had some other items that he, like many fans, had salvaged from the abandoned Valley including another very special item. The folders of club correspondence from 1959/60 were fascinating, the signs literally taken off the dressing room walls are brilliant, the cassette tapes are being digitised right now, including cup-winning captain Don Welsh talking about lifting the trophy as well as having to give a Nazi salute when playing for England v Germany. But Andy was right, the special item was very special.
The museum held all of the club’s board minutes from 1921 to 1984 bar the 1923/24 season during which Charlton made a disastrous and thankfully short-lived move to Catford. We believed those minutes were long lost, possibly burnt in a “mysterious” fire that destroyed club records amongst accusations of irregular payments.
But no, those minutes had been in Andy Soloman’s loft for many years. So long that he no longer remembers how he came by them, but they are now safe in the museum and are being digitised to preserve them and make them available to any fans or historians who may be interested in them. Great Save Two!
The Great Save resources
We’ve created what we’ve called The Great Save ‘Taxonomy of Football Memorabilia’. In other words, a list – of the kinds of items we believe are more or less valuable in terms of requiring preservation and / or making a collection. It’s a downloadable PDF here.
We’ve also compiled The Great Save ‘Beginner’s Guide to the Different Types of Football Heritage Entity’ you might set up with some real world examples drawn from our blog posts. It’s a downloadable PDF here.
And, as mentioned above, we’ve recently produced The Great Save ‘Digitisation Route to Preserving Collections’. You can download that here.
And finally …
We’re very happy to take feedback, reader contributions and additional information through any of these three channels: via the Comments section below, by email to thegreatsave@btinternet.com or via X/Twitter @TheGreatSave1
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