BATTERSEA PARK

I was at a "do" in Battersea Park on Sunday; you know, drinks on arrival, a couple of speeches, delicious wine and then a delicious meal under a smallish marquee. Old friends and colleagues with family of the hosts, including a number of useful footballers from the old school, who told of news of their lives since playing school football. They reminded me that the Old Carthusians "trained" in preparation for their Arthurian League matches in Battersea Park.
I used to travel weekly from Godalming to London during the season to run a session for anyone who turned up. usually there was a practical number waiting for me especially before a "big" game and on one occasion one lad turned up during bad weather. We went to the pub.

Battersea Park has held a number of historic football matches in its time. It is after all a " green lung" for London and a 200 acre facility designed to give Londoners a rural space since 1858. It is made from reclaimed marshland on the banks of the Thames and also used for market gardening providing food for the city.

On January 9th 1864 the new "Laws" of Association Football were "trialed" in Battersea Park between a team formed by the FA president Arthur Pember, a journalist, the man with a moustache!!! Arthur formed a club called No Names of Kilburn, (the No Names is a reference to his work in investment where clients were known as "Names"). NN Kilburn played together until the 1870s.

His team of well known footballers of the era played against Ebenezer Cobb Morley's XI (below), the secretary of the FA, who also brought prominent footballers of the day to play for him.

Later, The Wanderers, a club formed mainly by old boys of Forest School in Snaresbrook, E17, who had won the FA Cup in 1872 played the oldest club in the World, Sheffield FC in an exhibition game, once again showing off the new rules.

Ironically, The Wanderers hockey club play on the Battersea astro pitch these days.