With no written record and with human memory being too cloudy to be reliable, the precise date on which Aston Villa Football Club were founded can never be firmly established. But it can be linked to an impromptu meeting between four members of a local Wesleyan Chapel cricket team in the misty cold of a winter’s evening under a gaslight in Heathfield Road, Birchfield, Birmingham, sometime early in 1874. The meeting was between Jack Hughes, Frederick Matthews, Walter Price and William Scattergood, all keen cricketers who wanted to keep their Villa Cross team together during the winter months.
After witnessing an unorganised game of football played on a meadow off Heathfield Road they came up with the idea of taking up the new game Association Football and forming a club of their own. Charles Midgeley was elected secretary, Price was appointed captain and within two weeks Aston Villa Football Club had 15 playing members, albeit with no-one to actually play against. After the reputed first competitive match of Aston Villa in March 1875, it was not until the autumn of that year that the next match against another team was played. That first game was against Aston Brook St.Mary’s, a rugby team, and a compromise had to be reached with one half of each code being played! Unfortunately there is no record either of the final score or how the winners were decided – tries, goals under the bar, goals over the bar or what. Completely off topic, did you know that originally in rugby a try had no scoring value – it just gave you the chance to “try” to score a goal – what we now call a conversion. Never say that this blog is not educational!
Villa Park has been the home of Aston Villa since 1897 after spells at Wilson Road, Aston Park, Lower Aston Grounds Meadow and Wellington Road, Perry Barr, the latter ground giving them the nickname ‘Perry Barr Pets’. The site on which Villa Park is built was the mid-Victorian Aston Lower Grounds amusement park. Villa’s former grounds were a far cry from the current majestic venue. Facilities for either players or spectators were non-existent. In the early days at Perry Bar for example, a hayrick had to be moved from the middle of the pitch before each game and a hump near one end of the playing area had to be contended with!
The name Villa derives from Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel, whose former cricket club as we have mentioned above provided the founders of the Aston Villa Football Club. An actual villa once stood in the area and was large enough a landmark to have the district named after it. The nickname, ‘Villans’ is a wordplay that confuses many people with its spelling (many people incorrectly spell it ‘Villains’), and the older, and now unused nickname of the ‘Lions’ derived from the crest .By the way, Aston Villa take their first name from the larger district of Aston, which in turn is derived from ‘Estone’, meaning East Hill.
Villa originally played in deep red and blue from the colours of the old school of the founders. Black was worn for a short spell as were shirts of all claret, blue and white hoops and chocolate and light blue halves, before changing to the famous claret and blue, which became a much copied combination in football circles.
The claret shirts with blue sleeves became synonymous with Villa, and although in very recent years so-called shirt designers have attempted to meddle with nearly a hundred years of history with plain claret shirts, and claret with light-blue pinstripes, in the end it is still the traditional style that everyone outside Burnley recognises as being Aston Villa’s colours.
In its formative years Aston Villa attracted several influential members of Scottish Protestant origin. Among them were John Lindsay and George Ramsay, who became a prime mover in the club’s rise in stature to be one of the major clubs of late-Victorian England. George Ramsay was a Glaswegian, and this Scottish connection might explain the adoption of the lion in the crest – it is almost identical to the one in the emblem of Glasgow Rangers, which carries the motto “Ready”.
Since Villa’s motto is “Prepared”, there is an obvious link. Whatever the link may be however, the lion has been a constant feature in Villa’s badge over the years, proudly rampant in white on a classically shaped light-blue shield originally, to be replaced more recently by being placed on a more angular shield striped with the famous claret and blue with the motto “Prepared” lying in the shield itself, in contrast to an early 1990 design by Villa fan Jim Duncan with the famous motto in a scroll underneath the badge.
Any article about Aston Villa, whatever the subject, is not complete without mentioning the Trinity Road Stand. Succumbing finally and tragically to the modernisers, the year 2000 saw the sad loss of the ultimate landmark of English football. The Duke of York opened this stand, with its unique red-brick frontage, masterminded by the then club chairman Fred Rinder, in 1924.
Did Rinder, who was dubbed at the time an architectural agitator, get carried away with Archibald Leitch’s original, quite modest design? Yes, without doubt Fred Rinder got carried away. And luckily so. Rinder’s original plan saw a Villa Park with a capacity of 104,000. He added the Oak Room, the first restaurant at a British ground, steam rooms and an X-ray machine. Other Rinder finesses include leaded windows, curved panelling on the upper tier balcony in the distinctive club colours, pavilion-style towers flanking the central stairway and gold-leaf mosaics, proudly depicting the club’s crest. Alas it is all gone now….any history of the Villa will never be the same again. What would Rinder and Leitch have made of the modern Villa Park? We will never know.
Congratulations on a very nicely written article, but I am afraid there are parts of it that are inaccurate.
I shall soon be publishing a full history of the club.
Sincerely,
John Lerwill
Thank you for your appreciation. The piece passed the desks of and has been proofread by club-related officials or individuals, such as Dave Ismay, Ian Robothan and Simon Inglis. Please reveal flaws and inaccuracies.
Han
Han, the people you mentioned are not historians, except Simon Inglis who’s speciality is the history of football grounds only. To my knowledge he has not done original research on the history of AVFC.
I was the official historian at Villa until last year, and your query did not get to me. I produced the 2-volume Aston Villa Chronicles in 2009, whichg covers the history from 1874-1924 from original research, not copied from existing publications.
Even so, I have since found even extra clarification on the history which will be coming out in my to-be-published history this year. For obvious reasons, I cannot reveal anything until that is published, though much of what is the correct history is stated in The Villa Chronicles stated above.
My well-known Villa history website may help.
Sincerely,
John
Thank you for your kind comments, John. One would have thought the piece would have been passed on to authorities on the subject.
Looking forward to your magnum opus!
Han
Hello Han,
The “magnum opus” is now out! 🙂
Aston Villa : The First Superclub
(the story of Aston Villa, 1874-2012)
This club history is far more extensive than any other (510 pages) and contains a great deal of new material to take the club’s history up to the present day and Paul Lambert’s appointment.
Please link to John Lerwill’s website for further details: http://www.lerwill-life.org.uk/astonvilla/superclub.htm
Wonderful John!
Rangers only introduced their lion crest with the “ready” motto in 1959. So it is more likely Rangers were inspired by Aston Villa. Villa more than likely because of the Scottish connection got their inspiration from the Royal coat of arms of Scotland.
The traditional Rangers crest is the RFC monogram not the Scottish lion rampant.
Appreciating the recent input that requires verification. Thank you.
From the official Rangers website.
http://www.rangers.co.uk/club/history/crest
Rangers probably adopted the Scottish lion rampant out of nativist sentiment like Hearts’ St Andrew’s cross crest to distinguish themselves from the “Irish” Celtic and Hibernian.
“1878 – Arrival of Archie Hunter. Introduction of the lion as the club’s logo and “Prepared” as their motto.”
http://www.lerwill-life.org.uk/astonvilla/a_villa_history.htm
That’s how understand it although I seem to remember McGregor had something to do with it. There were Hearfs connections I know.
Poor Archie died in his 30’s. The old pictures, some in John’s book live on.
A nice succinct history, a great club,with a great history!
Christopher, I alluded to the fact that there are parts of the history that are not quite correct. That bit that you’re passing a compliment on is one of the bits that is not correct! Sorry!
Michael, Hearts adapted the St. Andrew’s cross as an acknowledgement to the St. Andrew’s club in Edinburgh. Hearts had gone out of business, and many of their players went to play for St. Andrew’s.
It has nothing to do with sectarianism.
Good website Han. Great book John, Santa bought it for me. Are you up for an update? The years pass quickly and Santa will be back before you can say Appy Arry Ampton.
i like it
My husband’s grandfather, Thompson, was a cricket scorer at the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel cricket club. We believe that he was involved in forming the football team. Any way of finding out?
Which extensive and thorough desk & field research efforts have you taken? Which local archives and history books and club historians have you consulted?