Tag Archives: the Forest Recreation Ground

Last time, I looked for the most part at the early days of Notts County and Nottingham Forest. They were not the only football teams to play their fixtures down on the Forest, though. A veritable plethora of small local teams flourished in Nottingham during this era. They had some wonderful names, all marvellously evocative of the origins of their players:

“Notts Artisans, Notts Athletic, Nottingham Bank, Nottingham Castle, Notts Forest Swifts, Nottingham Co-op, Nottingham Lindum, the Nottingham Manufacturing Company, Notts County Rovers, Nottingham Lace, the Notts Law Club, Notts Magdala, Notts Pioneers, Nottingham Postmen, Nottingham Post Office, Nottingham Press, Notts Thursday Athletic, Notts Thursday Rovers, Nottingham Thursday Wanderers, Nottingham Strollers, Nottingham Trent, and Nottingham Trinity.

All of the “Thursday teams” would have been from Sherwood, given the day when the shops closed for the afternoon in this northerly suburb of the town. Have a wild guess when it was half day closing in Sheffield. Yes, on a Wednesday. But what about the little Welsh town of Abergavenny?

Here is a sleepy Sherwood as recently as the early 1950s. How many houses have been demolished to make way for charity shops and empty premises!

Not much is known about many of the smaller Nottingham clubs, except that their names sometimes figure in the very early rounds of the fledgling FA Cup. I would be very surprised indeed, though, if there were any connection between Nottingham Trent Football Club and Nottingham Trent University.

In the list above, mention is made of Notts Law Club. They played the High School on an unknown date during the Christmas holidays of 1879-1880 and duly beat their young opponents by 3-0. All three goals were strongly disputed by the High School and no further fixtures appear ever to have taken place against this opposition. Notts Law Club was the original team of the most brilliant outside right of his day, Arthur Cursham, who played for Notts County, among many other clubs, and eventually captained England. Notts Law Club, though, were an extremely violent set of individuals, and gained such a reputation for rough play and a willingness to argue the toss about every single decision that other local teams soon became unwilling to arrange fixtures with them. Indeed, so hostile was the general local reaction to the Notts Law Club that the team was eventually forced to disband completely. Notts Law Club never had a player who won an Olympic Gold Medal, but one of the other little teams did:

This team was Notts Magdala F.C., who had a very famous player in the person of Frederick William Chapman, an Olympic Gold Medal winner in the United Kingdom team in the 1908 Olympics held in London. Here is a photograph of the team which won a hard fought Final against Denmark by 2-0, with the first goal coming from that very same Fred Chapman of Notts Magdala F.C. and also of the High School, which he had attended from 1891-1898. In the Olympic Final, Fred played as a central defender. The second goal was scored by the era’s legendary amateur centre forward, Vivian Woodward. Previously the United Kingdom had defeated Sweden by 12-1 and Holland by 4-0. Arguably, their Olympic victory made England, who provided all of the players for the United Kingdom team, Champions of the World. Fred Chapman is the second player from the right on the back row:

Fred Chapman was still a relative unknown, however, even when he became one of the Notts Magdala club’s eleven Vice-Presidents, and later the Honorary Secretary and Treasurer. The club had 55 members and its playing captain was another Old Nottinghamian, John Barnsdale, (1878 –1960) born in Sherwood and later to play for Nottingham Forest on 28 occasions during the 1904-1905 season.  He was living at Lenton Hall around this time:

Houses must have been cheaper then. John Barnsdale was already Fred Chapman’s godfather, and years afterwards, became his “Uncle Jack”, when Fred married his sister, Evelyn Mary Barnsdale.

Not all of the local clubs on the Forest were called after the town. Prominent sides also included Basford Rovers and Sneinton Institute. It must all have been extremely colourful. Just a few of the old clubs’ colours have survived, and I thought it might be nice to recall them using present day teams who wear the same colours.

Notts Druids wore amber and black quarters, as do Hesketh Bank AFC most Saturdays in the West Lancashire Football League Premier Division:

Notts Olympic lasted from 1884-1893.  They wore pink and white, rather like Portsmouth FC used to wear from 1898-1909, just before they joined Division 3:

Nottingham Press, appropriately perhaps for a team of journalists, wore all black, rather like DFC United in the USA. Another local team who wore all black were Notts Swifts.

Nottingham Rangers, who still exist, used to wear scarlet and white shirts. So did Notts Wanderers. Either team might have played in this kit, found in an online catalogue:

or in this one, worn by Ottawa Fury FC in the North American Soccer League:

or like the slightly more boring Charlton Athletic:

or perhaps Stoke City:

Nottingham Rovers used to play in black and white, perhaps like these gentlemen:

Or like this old kit of Glossop North End AFC now in the North West Counties Football League Premier Division after a brief spell in the Football League:

I cannot really imagine that they wore the same kit as Portuguese team, Boavista:

Nottingham Scottish used to wear white shirts and blue shorts, exactly like Rangers’ away strip:

Only the fabrics change in football kits. The colours of the shirts never seem to change very much.

These are Fred Chapman’s Amateur International caps:

I will tell you more about his career in another blogpost. By the way, the illustrations of old football kits came from the best ever website for the soccer nerd and all those boys who had more than twenty different Subbuteo teams. New Brighton Tower 1898? Oh, yes.

Over the years, the Forest Recreation Ground has been used for many, very varied, sporting activities. Here is a modern map:

In the medieval period, bear baiting had been probably the first activity on the Forest, with a horse racing course eventually being constructed on the very same site.

Originally the racecourse measured four miles long, but in the early 1700s, this was shortened to two miles. In 1797 a new track in the form of a figure-of-eight was laid out. Unfortunately, this rather strange layout was not successful, and another more conventional course, therefore, oval in shape, was constructed soon afterwards

By the 1860s though, the racecourse was in decline, offering only small prizes, and attracting only second rate horses.  The last race meeting took place on September 29th-30th 1890, and Nottingham’s horse racing subsequently moved to Colwick.

Around 1800, the centre of the racecourse had been used as a place of exercise by the many officers of the cavalry who lived in a distinctive Georgian building on Forest Road. Familiar to all High School pupils, it played host to a tiny sweet shop originally called “Baldry’s” and, more recently, “Dicko’s”. It is now a bakery. Most of those cavalry officers were destined to charge at the Battle of Waterloo:

By 1849, cricketers were using the western end of the Forest for practice, and they soon moved to the centre of the racecourse to play professional games for large sums of money.

It is not really known when football was first played on the Forest. A group of young men regularly met there in the early 1860s, to play a primitive kind of field hockey called “shinney”. They soon thought of giving this up to play the new sport of football.

An initial meeting was convened therefore in the upstairs room of the then Clinton Arms in Shakespeare Street, and the “Forest Foot Ball Club” was duly formed in 1865.

Their first fixture on the Forest was on Thursday, March 22nd 1866, a friendly game between Fifteen of the Forest, and Thirteen of the Notts Club. The game was eventually played between Seventeen of the Forest and Eleven of the Notts, and, according to some sources, was goalless, Nottingham Forest’s first ever goal being scored in their third game, another friendly on the Forest against Notts County, which finished as a 1-1 draw.

Other contradictory sources say, however, that the initial game finished as a 1-0 victory for Nottingham Forest, with Old Nottinghamian, William Henry Revis, providing the decisive score.

One early newspaper article, described how:

“When the men were spread out, the field looked exceedingly picturesque, with the orange and black stripes of the Notts, and the red and white of the Foresters.”

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One of Nottinghamshire’s greatest early footballers, E.H.Greenhalgh, who played for England in the first ever international match against Scotland in 1872, was to write, of football on the Forest:

“The first set of players who came out were regarded as a company of harmless
lunatics who amused themselves by kicking one another’s shins, but did no great harm to the public at large, although in earlier days they would have been put in the stocks.”

Richard Daft, wrote in similar vein…

“When a young man I played regularly with the Notts County Football Club when it was first formed. I believe I played centre forward, but I am not quite sure about this as we were never very particular in those days about keeping in one place. Charging and dribbling were the chief features of the game at that time, and often very rough play was indulged in.”

The exact location of Nottingham Forest’s pitches has never been ascertained for certain. My own researches have led me to believe that they must have been immediately to the east of what is now the “Park-and-ride” car park, at the bottom of the slight slope, but I have no way of being totally sure about this. Look for the orange arrow:

Forest certainly had major problems with their location, however, when they entered the F.A.Cup from 1878 onwards. The Forest was common land, with free access for all, but the regulations of the F.A.Cup stipulated that an admission charge had to be levied. For this reason, “Forest Foot Ball Club” had to move to the Meadows area for the 1879-1880 cup campaign.

This was not, of course, before the club had introduced various innovations. Samuel Weller Widdowson had invented the shin guard, which was first worn on the Forest in 1874. In 1878, the first ever referee’s whistle in the world was heard on the Forest, most probably in a game between Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Norfolk. It was blown by Mr C.J.Spencer, and marked the first step in a long, long journey of what shall we say, talking points?

The club’s departure however, did not mean that the Forest itself was suddenly devoid of football clubs. Throughout the Victorian era, football was always to remain the main sport, played by scores of different local teams, all wearing their own unique and brightly coloured shirts and shorts.

Indeed, at this time, there were so many local teams using the pitches that the High School were frequently unable to fulfil their own fixtures on Saturdays, but instead had to play on Wednesdays, occasionally Thursdays, or even Tuesdays. At the time, of course, Wednesday was half day closing for shops and businesses in Nottingham, and Thursday was half day closing in Sherwood.

On these half days, it was by no means unusual to see footballers on buses and trams, travelling to their game, already changed into their kit. A newspaper at the time wrote of

“persons hurrying to the Forest football grounds, and dozens of players in full
rig making their way in the same direction,”

Notts County wore black and orange hoops, and at least three other kits:

Nottingham Forest had always worn their famous “Garibaldi Red”. Here are some of their oldest kits, with only minor changes from year to year, and those sexy shorts getting shorter and shorter:

By the way, all the illustrations of old football kits came from the best ever website for the soccer nerd and all those boys who had more than twenty different Subbuteo teams. New Brighton Tower 1898? Oh, yes.

Forest and County were not the only football clubs in Nottingham.  Next time I will look at some of the less well known local teams in the area at the end of the Victorian era and before the First World War.