Well, a lot has changed since our first blog post went out in early March. Not much of it for the better and sadly some of it making The Great Save more relevant than ever.
Closing down
It’s not just football that’s been closing down but the Heritage Lottery Fund closed its doors in late March to new applications for funding for at least six months. Other funders have followed suit which means that various projects we’ve been involved with at Reading and Maidstone have been put on ice. University of Exeter’s workshops, mentioned in the last blog, have not yet been re-arranged but Will Barrett suggests they may take place by Zoom.
Sporting Heritage has posted a link to a funding finder linked to potential sporting heritage activity which could be of use. It’s here:
National Football Library?
Peter Holme from the National Football Museum (NFM) responded to the article in When Saturday Comes in which Roger mooted the possibility of a National Football Library. He wrote “A facility already exists at the NFM in Manchester or to be more precise at its Preston site. Researchers can visit the Research Centre by appointment to use its library of over 2000 books and its extensive archive.”
A Great Save follower from Bristol wrote in to describe his own collection of almost 4000 football books and numerous series of magazines. Another follower has over a thousand books on his club alone (well, it is Manchester U). Clearly there’s a lot of material out there and there might well be demand for another access point in addition to Preston.
The 1950s equivalent of swapping shirts
These days you don’t see many autograph books, writes Geoff. They’ve largely been supplanted as personal mementoes by selfies, or signatures on pictures or shirts. Back in the 1950s though, keeping an autograph book was a common hobby. Among football followers, players’ signatures would be sought after.
Dedicated collectors – often, although not exclusively, young boys – would accumulate signatures over a period of time. If you were hunting footballers’ autographs, you might wait outside the players’ entrance before or after matches. Or you might track players down after training, in coffee bars or cafes. You might sometimes bump into them around town – good opportunism if you had your book with you, or at least a pen and a scrap of paper that you could paste in later.
The sets of signatures on these autograph book pages, though, can be dated specifically to two consecutive Saturdays in March 1956. That’s because the autograph collector was Gordon Chilvers, who kept goal for Walsall. Their opponents in those two weeks were Watford and Reading.
Gordon Chilvers was a young man in his early twenties, making his way in the game. It can’t have been usual for professional footballers to collect opponents’ autographs, but he had his reasons. These days he is settled and enjoying life in Bavaria, and remembers clearly what he refers to as his “earlier life”. He signed professionally for Walsall in 1952 aged 18, having already played as an amateur for the reserves, and on a few occasions the first team. His long-term plan however was already in train: he had left Wolverhampton Grammar School at 16 to embark on a five-year engineering apprenticeship, which he continued in parallel. This set him up for his later career with companies such as Westland Aircraft in Yeovil. Altogether he made 124 league appearances for Walsall through to 1958, before continuing outside the professional game in the Southern League, with clubs including Weymouth, Trowbridge and Yeovil.
But while he was a professional footballer, Gordon collected autographs. As he puts it, he was particularly interested in “the stars of those times, for future recollection and for family”. He had the presence of mind to appreciate that his time in professional football wouldn’t last forever, and so found a way to record it, through collecting autographs. He also had in mind his younger brother Keith, not yet a teenager, who would end up as the book’s long-term custodian. It’s still in the family now, with over 30 pages of signatures.
Its most prized page carries the autographs of the ‘Busby Babes’. Gordon went to watch Manchester United play at Wolves at around this time, and was able to meet the players after the match – either through being a Walsall player, or thanks to his personal friendship with the Wolves and England goalkeeper Bert Williams, with whom he kept in touch subsequently.
Viking FC recalled
John Porter wrote in to The Great Save about his work with a little-known football club.
A personal project of mine is researching a local amateur football club called Viking Sports FC based in Greenford (West London/Middlesex). To provide a speedy bit of background, Viking was founded in 1945 and its extraordinary story evolves around its many daring overseas tours. On a domestic front it built its own ground in 1966, and enjoyed success in the Dauntless, Nemean, Middlesex, Hellenic and the Combined Counties football leagues – and even entered the FA Cup in 1992. It also launched the careers of Les Ferdinand and Alan Devonshire.
Sadly, the club was forced to fold in 2003 due to financial problems. I’m really enthusiastic about telling this club’s fantastic story and by doing so, keeping it alive. To that end I’m keen to one day cobble together something in print and for any surviving records (sadly it appears a lot of the club’s key administrative records have not survived) to be collected and eventually deposited in an archive. Otherwise, Viking’s amazing story will be completely forgotten altogether.
Sporting Heritage Football Network
In a similar space to The Great Save, Sporting Heritage has decided to continue the development of this network in the first instance in digital form. The aim will be to bring together all those with an interest in football heritage to discuss key issues and opportunities to support the sharing and preservation of football heritage.
To join the network, simply email justine@sportingheritage.org with the subject heading ‘Football Heritage Network’ and confirm in the body of the email that you are happy to be added to their e-distribution list.
Reading FC Film and TV collection update
Members of the Reading FC Collectors & Historians Society have helped complete a list of all club-produced videos since 1984 (between us, we know where a copy of every one is) and a very comprehensive list of filmed and televised matches up to c2000 when coverage becomes too common-place to record. Astonishingly not a single minute of match action was covered throughout the entire 1960s! We skip from Nov 1959 to Feb 1970 – both away games. Elm Park was no friend to the TV cameraman.
Simultaneously with these efforts, the lockdown has prompted a supporter to upload to YouTube matches he’s taped off-air. To what extent can this be viewed as a permanent record? And the other issue we have – finding a working Betamax machine to digitise some mid-1980s recordings.
Exeter City’s title season celebrated
Will Barrett, from Exeter University, writes: we are launching a new online exhibit on 25 April, using many archival items, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of our Division Four title win back in 1990. It’s here. This is part of our National Lottery Heritage funded work.
Maidstone football exhibition sprouts roots
The ‘Maidstone: United in Football’ exhibition of 2019-20 was not what I originally intended, says John. When the first planning meeting took place, the woman from the Museum reacted to my outline list of football stories by suggesting it needed something extra. “What’s that?” we asked. “Women’s suffrage”, she replied earnestly, prompting an earthy riposte from the none-too-woke chief executive of the local football club. As I’d been peripherally involved with the establishment of women’s football in the town, however, it set me thinking. I re-contacted some of the girls who’d been part of it back in the 1970s. The result was that I ended up with a chunk of material on the true roots of women’s football that proved one of the highlights of the show. It demonstrated how delving into social history can make the story of football far more interesting, because it exposes the roots of the tree. Dig into the employment legislation of the Victorian era and you’ll understand why Saturday football took off. Delve into local industries and you’ll see why football worked here but not there. Study the mechanics of war, the vagaries of the economy or changes in media consumption and you’ll appreciate the ins and outs of football participation and attendance.
Once the exhibition was over, I was immediately asked to consider three complementary permanent exhibitions with a social history component. Covid-19 put it all on hold; but I’ve been using the time to do more groundwork, the fruits of which can be read about here. Even before this first media publicity, the website www.oldbunyardskentpride.com was getting a volume of visits unprecedented in my experience. I can think of a lot of counties that might do something comparable, even if less colossal. Anyone who’d like to undertake a similar exercise for their own locality is welcome to contact me for advice through the Comment page on the website.
Community Interest Company Corner
Hatters’ Heritage – by Roger Wash
What’s the formal status of your heritage group?
We are a registered charity – a Charitable Incorporated Organisation
Which groups are involved? (Supporters Trust / Individuals / Club / local museum / HLF etc)
We, the Trustees, are a group of individuals who came together following an appeal made on the club’s social media sites for supporters to come on board to form a ‘historical society’ to preserve the history and heritage of the Hatters. I have been a collector, gatherer and custodian of memorabilia for many years (club historian for 35) and wanted to make sure it was preserved for future generations and also available for viewing. With this in mind we applied for and received a substantial Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grant to enable us to have a state of the art website built for us.
How did you get started?
Kenilworth Road is 115 years old and does not have the facilities to have any sort of museum – the proposed new stadium at Power Court will have a museum but that will probably be four years hence. In the interim it was decided to digitise everything in our possession and design a website to showcase the club’s rich history.
We have a willing army of volunteers and the Trustees all have different skill sets. As part of the HLF grant we needed to show inclusivity and have organised some highly successful ‘roadshows’ around the county where we can display memorabilia and encourage supporters to come in and talk about and share their own prized treasures. These conversations and photos have been recorded.
We have purchased from the grant much recording and digitising equipment and have made a start at interviewing old players, officials and supporters in order that their memories can be preserved on the website.
How much stuff have you got?
We are fortunate at the club to have minute books going back to formation in 1885, team books back to Victorian times, thousands of photos, complete sets of home programmes back to 1934 and many before, all away programmes since the war and many before, handbooks back to 1898. I reckon we have at least 35,000 items to digitise over time.
How do you store your stuff?
Various places! We have recently taken on a large storage unit to keep bulk items and have ensured that we will have adequate archive space at the new ground.
How do you make it available for public view?
Difficult at present, hence our new website.
What’s the best / most unusual memorabilia find?
We have recently been loaned two 1959 FA Cup final shirts and medals. We have various international caps, medals and shirts.
What piece of advice would you offer people trying to set up a group like yours?
It goes without saying that all proposed committee members/trustees should be passionate about preserving the club’s heritage. If a website is to be set up, make sure that the design firm appointed can physically see what it is you are hoping to digitise to prevent issues over website capacity later. It also helps if the website designers are football fans!
Thanks to Roger Wash of Hatters’ Heritage
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