A remarkable find in a family archive has shed new light on the earliest days of Scottish tennis. The minute book of the Glasgow Lawn Tennis Club, founded in March 1877, has resurfaced after years at the back of a drawer, and is now with the Mitchell Library in Glasgow having been donated by a descendant of an original member.
   As no other tennis club north of the border is known to have existed this early, the discovery of this leather-bound book could give Glasgow the honour of being Scotland's first lawn tennis club.

The Glasgow Lawn Tennis Club was established by men who were members of the city's prestigious Western Club and they were soon flooded with subscriptions from prospective members, with equal numbers of men and women being allowed to join.
   The committee ordered two sets of equipment from London, and the minutes record carefully all their early activities as the club got under way. It will surprise many to learn that they played primarily indoors, renting Burnbank Drill Hall, off Great Western Road.
   They were clearly a vibrant organisation, playing for at least a decade, and were unusual for a Victorian sporting body as they gave equal playing status to male and female members. Gentlemen had to be over 21 years old and their subscription was one pound, while ladies were 17 or over and paid ten shillings, and they were all clearly of the prosperous middle classes, with many who were or became prominent citizens.
   While many of the meetings focussed on administration and finances, the minute book also has some fascinating social detail.
   In February 1878, one can almost hear the gasps of horror when the Chairman informed the committee that complaints had been made by ladies that some gentlemen had been playing in their shirt sleeves, without coats! Decorum had to be restored, and the Honorary Secretary was tasked with placing a notice in the Gentlemen's dressing room: 'In deference to representations by some of the lady members of the club, the Committee request that gentlemen removing their coats for play will substitute a light jacket while ladies are present. By order.'

The club held its first tournament in 1879, although sadly the winners are not recorded, and the minute book continues to detail meetings up to November the following year. After that, member subscription lists are detailed up to 1885, but what happened to the club after that is not known.
   Lawn tennis was still a new sport when the Glasgow club was set up, invented by Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, an English sportsman who patented his invention in 1874 and called it Sphairistike. He marketed it as a boxed set costing upwards of five guineas and although he sold over a thousand sets in the first year, because of the expense it went primarily to the well-heeled country house set. Lawn tennis was seen initially as a summer recreation for garden parties rather than a competitive sport.
   However, tennis developed rapidly as it captured the imagination and the first clubs were established in England, leading to the creation of the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club. By the time the first national championship was held in the summer of 1877 – the forerunner of the Wimbledon we know today – the modern game was taking shape with a rectangular court, where the cloth-covered ball and the modern racket shape had been introduced.

In Scotland, the earliest known recreational players were in Edinburgh. Sir James Patten McDougall KCB – then plain James Patten, a young lawyer – recalled sending off to London for a tennis set in 1874 and setting it up with some friends at the Grange Cricket Ground in Raeburn Place. He described the game as it was then: 'The racquets were light, longer in the head and shorter in the handle than now. The balls were uncovered rubber, about two thirds the diameter of the modern ball, with a hole in them. The court was shaped like a sandglass, narrower at the net than the backline.'
   After experimenting outdoors, like the Glaswegians they played indoors at a specially constructed hall at the Grange Club, built by the Edinburgh Lawn Tennis Company and known as the 'old tin hut'. It was there, in the summer of 1878, that Patten won a tournament which was later recognised as the first Scottish championship, even though it was a purely Edinburgh affair.
   Over in the west, the Glasgow Lawn Tennis Club played an important role in getting tennis off the ground in the city, and was clearly a success, but what happened after the first decade remains something of a mystery: there are no known mentions of the club in the newspapers of the day or in tennis histories, and its existence might never have been discovered had it not been for the chance survival of the minute book.
   The handwritten records of this pioneering club show that there are still significant discoveries to be made in the history of Scottish sport.
 
 
* I am immensely grateful to Jamie Donald, great-great-nephew of club member Thomas Francis Donald, for recognising the significance of the minute book which had been kept in the family for generations, and for letting me read and photograph it on its way to the Special Collections Department of the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.
 

Glasgow Lawn Tennis Club
Founding Committee, March 1877
 
Donald Matheson (1832-1901), Chairman. East India Merchant, later Brigadier-General Sir Donald Matheson KCB.
Captain Robert Mercer-Tod (1839-1903), Honorary Secretary. 43rd Light Infantry.
Captain William Bannatyne (1839-1925). 8th (The King’s) Regiment.
Robert Martin Barklie (1846-1903). Architect, Royal Engineers.
William Richard Buchanan (1847-1901). Wine Merchant.
William Crouch (1840-1927). Civil Engineer.
Thomas Robert Johnston Logan (1837-1913). Iron and Coal Master.


More tennis reading on this blog

Herbert Lawford, Scotland's forgotten Wimbledon winner.

In search of Mr Laing - Hill and Adamson's famous Edinburgh tennis player

I recently spoke at the International Football History Conference in London, about the significance of the Meadows for the early development of football in Edinburgh.
   It is well known that Hibs and Hearts took their first steps on the Meadows, but in fact the story goes back much further. This historic green space was formed in 1855 as Edinburgh's first public park, and one of its most surprising features is that the City Council specifically mentioned football as one of its key attractions.
   In my paper, I explain how and why the Meadows was so important for football in the capital, outlining the social and economic changes that enabled young working class men to take up the sport, long before association rules came along in the 1870s.
​   The full illustrated presentation can be read by clicking on this link, which will open up as a pdf.

For further reading, have a look at some of my earlier blogs:

The birth of football in Edinburgh.

How Edinburgh could have been a 'home of football'

For a more detailed history, the book '1824: The World's First Foot-Ball Club' is available on Amazon.

The buried remains of a football pavilion at the first Hampden Park are to be protected from the threat of development, thanks to the timely intervention of Historic Environment Scotland which plans to designate the site as a scheduled monument.
   The foundations of the pavilion, which stood at Hampden for just five years between 1878 and 1883, are the only tangible surviving elements of what is thought to be the world's first stadium which was purpose-built for association football. It is a fascinating story that deserves to be examined in detail.
   Hampden Park, in the south of Glasgow, opened in 1903 and is well known as Scotland's national football stadium, but it is the third stadium of that name and its origins go back three decades earlier to the summer of 1873. That was when Queen's Park Football Club took the inspired decision to build a ground of their own.
   Founded in 1867, Queen's Park had previously played on open recreation ground but the rapid growth in football's popularity, demonstrated by the crowds that flocked to the first international match in 1872, convinced them they needed somewhere to call home. A dedicated ground would also enable them to charge for admission, providing money for further development.
   After much lobbying, they persuaded Glasgow Council to lease an area of open ground off the Cathcart Road called Hampden Park after the nearest street to the south, Hampden Terrace. The club put up a wooden fence to enclose their playing area, built a modest wooden pavilion, and opened for business with a Scottish Cup tie against Dumbreck on 25 October 1873, winning 7-0.
   Hampden Park was unique, a place where football was king, unlike other grounds which had been created primarily to host sports such as cricket and athletics, with football only allowed as an afterthought. As such, the Queen's Park innovators created a template which was quickly copied as other football clubs saw the benefits of having their own ground, where they could cash in on the growing fervour for football.
   Queen's Park continued to invest in improvements, notably in 1876 when they built a grandstand along the length of one side, where they could charge extra in return for an improved view of the pitch. And the next thing they needed was a better pavilion, to replace the small stripping hut which had stood since the beginning.
   They found the answer thanks to the misfortune of others: in the autumn of 1877 Caledonian Cricket Club, which also played football and lacrosse, was ejected from their ground at Kelvinbridge as the landlords had sold the site for the new Glasgow Academy buildings.
   Caledonian CC had erected a superb new pavilion just two years earlier but it was now surplus to requirements. Queen's Park knew it well as they had played a Scottish Cup tie there in October 1876, so they saw an opportunity. They made the cricket club an offer of £65 for the building - surely much less than it originally cost - and undertook to dismantle it and move it to Hampden. It was a brave but inspired decision, as although the cost of removing and rebuilding eventually added up to £239, it meant that in February 1878 Queen's Park had a pavilion to be proud of.
   It was completed just in time, as Hampden Park was shortly to host its first international matches: against England on 2 March 1878, then against Wales three weeks later. Both ended in comprehensive victories, with scores that would be unthinkable today: 7-2 v England, 9-0 v Wales.
   The pavilion was opened with little fanfare, and although there is a single surviving photo (above) which probably shows the opening ceremony, there was no mention of the new building in the press. However, it is possible to build up a picture of its layout and style.
​​   It was an impressive construction, raised on an embankment with solid foundations, a timber-clad frame and a slate roof with decorative woodwork. A few steps led up to a large entrance vestibule, which had doors to two spacious dressing rooms, each with running water and windows facing the pitch.

Some views of the pavilion and its surroundings at Hampden Park were published in 1882 in a humorous book, Free Kicks at Football, which is available at Glasgow University Special Collections.
   The building was erected just in time, as the original wooden pavilion fell down in September 1879, when spectators sitting on its roof caused it to collapse.
   With the best facilities and a capacity for over ten thousand spectators, Hampden Park had become the principal football stadium in Scotland, and continued to host the internationals against England and Wales, which came along in 1880 and 1882. In all, Scotland played six matches at first Hampden and won them all, never scoring less than five goals in any of the games. It was also the venue for Scottish Cup finals in 1874, 1875, 1877 (second replay), 1878, 1879 and 1883, not to mention numerous high profile Queen's Park games.
   More broadly, having a 'home of Scottish football' gave the game considerable impetus and allowed it to develop rapidly, beyond all recognition. This was a period when Scotland dominated football on the field of play, the English in particular having no answer to the passing game that, in time, came to characterise the 'Scotch professor'.
   However, the life of first Hampden was cut short in 1883, when the Caledonian Railway published its plans for a new route that would cut right through the football ground, which the club still leased from the Council. The last major match to be played there was the Glasgow Charity Cup final on 19 May 1883, when Queen's Park beat Rangers 4-1 in front of a crowd estimated at over 10,000.

The pavilion's life came to an end in 1903 when Queen's Park moved once again, constructing the gigantic arena that we now know as Hampden Park, the third to bear that name.
   The club was forced to sell the pavilion piecemeal after misguidedly turning down an offer of £350 from Third Lanark for the building. It was broken up for its materials,  fetching just £73 and 10 shillings, much less than its market value. 

Footnote: Hampden Bowling Club and its pavilion

It had long been claimed by members of Hampden Bowling Club (now closed) that their pavilion was the same as the original football pavilion. This has now been proven to be a myth, as it was built new in 1905. HES have recognised this, and have turned down a request to designate the Bowling Club pavilion as a listed building.
   The HES proposal to designate the site of the first Hampden pavilion covers only a part of Kingsley Gardens, and the area occupied by the bowling club grounds has been excluded.

​
Thanks

This article would not have been possible without the input of a number of football historians, and I acknowledge with thanks the work done by Phil Martin, Frank McCrossan and Ged O'Brien in particular.


Update - 13 May 2026

Historic Environment Scotland has confirmed that the site of the Hampden pavilion has been designated as a scheduled monument, following a public consultation.
​ See https://www.historicenvironment.scot/about-us/news/historic-site-of-first-hampden-scores-scheduled-status/ 

Many years ago I bought this attractive belt buckle at an antique fair, engraved for presentation to Hugh McColl junior by the members of West End Cricket Club for the highest bowling average in 1871.
   At the time I had no idea where it came from, in fact initially I thought that West End may have referred to one of the ancestors of Newcastle United. But recently I finally uncovered the full story about Hugh McColl, and his little buckle has taken me on a fascinating journey of cricket and football from Scotland to South America.
   Thanks to the online digitisation of old newspapers and other publications, I established that West End was a Glasgow cricket club which took up football in the winter months and was one of the early members of the Scottish Football Association. McColl was not just a player at both sports, the SFA's first annual in 1875 listed him as the club contact, which was an important breakthrough as it gave his home address.

By a strange quirk, I found that Hugh McColl was later credited with being one of the pioneers of football in Chile, while his namesake Hugh MacColl had come to notice as one of the founders of Spanish football in Seville. My initial thought was that this could possibly be the same man, but it turned out to be a remarkable coincidence with a slight variation in spelling. So, who was the West End man, and how did he end up in Chile?
   Hugh McColl was born in 1852, the fifth child of Hugh McColl and Lillias Inglis Mackie who had married in 1841 and lived in Glasgow. His father was a skilled tradesman as an engine pattern maker, and the family home was in Richard Street in Anderston, now long gone but at the time a respectable area of town.
   As a young commercial clerk Hugh enjoyed cricket in his free time and around 1870 was one of the founding members of West End Cricket Club. He was clearly a decent player, as the following year he won the prize for bowling, but just how good is hard to tell as West End was a minor club whose matches rarely appeared in the press, nor did they trouble the Scottish Cricketers' Annual.
   In 1873 the club took a big step forward by securing the lease of Burnbank, the Glasgow Academicals ground on Great Western Road, and also formed a football section for the winter months. That spurred them on to join the Scottish FA, which enabled West End to enter the Scottish Cup in 1874, beating Star of Leven in the first round before going down 7-0 to the mighty Queen's Park in the second.
   They had to leave Burnbank in 1875 (with Rangers taking over the lease for a year), which appears to have prompted the cricket section to wind up, but West End carried on as a football club and took up residence at Avenue Park in Cowlairs.
   Hugh McColl was not just a player, appearing at full back, he held an integral role as club secretary for 1875-76. West End continued to enter the Scottish Cup and in 1876 they reached the third round after defeating 4th RRV and Govan, but were thrown out of the competition following a 1-1 draw with Edinburgh side Swifts, as the SFA ruled that West End must be disqualified for not scheduling the match on the due date.
   Like many clubs of the day, West End’s existence was brief. Their final Scottish Cup tie was in September 1877, a 5-1 loss to Strathclyde, and the club's last known fixture was in March 1878. They disbanded at the end of the season.
   That might have been the end of Hugh McColl's involvement with football, as he embarked on a career in the import/export trade, got married and started a family.  However, a decade later he crossed the Atlantic and set up in business in the Chilean port city of Valparaiso with his family.

There was already an established British community in Valparaiso with a long-standing cricket club, and that gave him the opportunity to resume his enthusiasm in football, which presumably had never gone away. In 1889 he was a founder of the first organised football club in Chile as an offshoot of the cricket club. Although details are sketchy it appears that Hugh McColl was a driving force, elected as its first president, one of several Scots involved on and off the field.
   The Valparaiso club took a while to settle, not helped by a civil war in 1891, then in 1892 was established as a standalone entity and began to promote football in the port city. The following year it elected a board of directors to became the first constituted football club in the country, and went on to be a founding member of the Football Association of Chile in 1895. Valparaiso was undoubtedly the most important team in the nascent football association, known simply as 'The Club' or 'The Senior Club' until the outbreak of the First World War forced it into a hiatus, as most of its players left to defend the British Empire.
   Meanwhile, Hugh McColl played an active role not just in Valparaiso but in the early development of football in Chile's capital, as he is seen in a photo of the first Santiago football eleven, which had been founded in 1893 by the Santiago Cricket and Athletic Club to play in the first intercity match between Valparaiso and Santiago. It is not clear how he was involved, and perhaps had been recruited to coach the new team. This is presently the only known photo of McColl.

Not long after, Hugh McColl and his family returned to Glasgow, having spent at least five years in Chile, with his daughter Lillias born there in 1891. Back home, he went into partnership in a shipping agency with John Crosbie Rogers (1839-1921), who had spent a long time in Chile before returning to Glasgow, where he was Chilean vice-consul. The business prospered and that meant several return trips to Valparaiso for McColl over the next two decades, as he developed trade between Chile and the UK. His company McColl and Rogers were described in the Glasgow directory as ship and insurance brokers, commission agents, export and produce merchants.
   After the War, the company became known as McColl and Sons, operating from an office in Wellington Street until his death in 1928.
   At the time, nothing was said about his role in football, and even today Hugh McColl is one of those little-known exporters of Scottish football, who learned the game at home before taking it abroad.
   He is now recognised as one of several Scots who were pioneers of Chilean football, and it is remarkable that his story has come to light thanks to a chance find at an antique fair.
 
Hugh McColl
Born 28 April 1852 in Glasgow
Died 13 October 1928 in Glasgow


With sincere thanks to Chilean football historian Sebastián Núñez Mardones for his input. Director of CEDEP, the Chilean Centre for Sports Studies, his book Selección Chilena 1910 - Duelos del Centenario is the definitive story of the first Chilean international team. 

See his comprehensive article on the early years: The background to the founding of Santiago Wanderers

Further reading:
Scots Football Worldwide - Valparaiso.
Scots Football Worldwide - Santiago.
How John Hamilton played for Chile in 1910.

One of the pioneers of Danish football was a man from Dundee who was top scorer in the country's first football league. James Young Smart, a player and administrator with Strathmore FC, went to Copenhagen in 1885 and made a huge impact through his skills on and off the field.
   Smart's influence was recalled when Queen's Park went on tour to Copenhagen in 1898. Scottish Sport magazine carried an interview with former player Alexander Hamilton, in which he stated that the honour of introducing the game in Denmark belonged to a former Dundee Strathmore player called JT Smart (they got his middle initial wrong). See Matt McDowell's fascinating research paper and an article on the Scottish Football Museum website.
   However, although Smart was an important figure he was not the actual founder of the game in Denmark. The first football was a birthday gift in 1878 for Johannes Juhl Raahauge, whose father was a merchant based in Hull; he then introduced the sport to his fellow students at Sorø Academy. And in 1879, KB (Kjøbenhavns  Boldklub) took up association football, three years after being founded as a multisport club, 
   James Young Smart was born in Dundee in 1862, the eldest surviving son of a jute mill manager. In the summer of 1878 he was elected secretary and treasurer of Strathmore FC, aged just 16, and played regularly for them over the next few years, rising to become club president in 1882. Strathmore had been founded early in 1877, named in honour of its patron the Earl of Strathmore, and its ground was at Rollo's Pier, off Magdalen Yard Road at the west end of the city.
    He remained still president until he left Dundee to go abroad, as reported in the Evening Telegraph on 18 February 1885: 'On Monday evening a number of gentlemen met in the Queen's Hotel and entertained Mr J.Y. Smart to supper on the occasion of his leaving Dundee for Copenhagen.'
   Soon after he arrived in Denmark, he joined KB and gained quite a reputation for his skills. An early history of Danish football said Smart was: 'an excellent player in almost every position… a crowd favourite, especially among the boys, jovial and playful, teaching them tricks and ball skills.'
   In the winter of 1886–87, he helped to translate the laws of association football from English into Danish, working with Ludwig Sylow and other KB committee members.
   In 1888, KB instigated the country's first knockout cup competition, and won it convincingly with Smart in the forefront. Then a year later, he was the top scorer in Denmark's first league tournament in 1889-90, scoring 12 times for KB although they finished second behind Akademisk. The following season, KB did win the league and Smart showed his versatility by sometimes playing in goal.
   Even after he left Denmark he was not forgotten and the creative Danish midfielder August Lindgren, who played in the 1908 Olympics, was nicknamed 'Smart' in tribute to the Scot.
​   In 1892, Smart went to New York for a while, then returned to Dundee to join the family business at Rosebank jute mill. He kept up his football interest as a member of Dundee FC's match committee, helping out in December 1898 when the club got going again after liquidation, and in December 1899 his sisters ran a stall at the football club's fundraising bazaar.
   Thereafter, things get a bit hazy. His father had died in 1896 and in March 1900 the Dundee Courier carried a company advert to announce that Mr James Young Smart was no longer employed at Rosebank mill. Although he was still listed as a jute factory manager in the 1901 census, there is nothing to indicate that he was still involved in the family business; yet his brother and two sisters were directors.
   It appears his life had started to go into a downward spiral and Smart died at Duke Street Hospital, Glasgow in 1921, age 59 and unmarried. The death certificate gave his usual residence as the Great Eastern Hotel, politely known as a 'working man's hostel' but in reality a doss-house; cause of death was myocardial degeneration and chronic nervous congestion (ie heart disease and stroke). It was a sorry end for a Scottish sporting pioneer whose impact on Danish football is remembered to this day.

​James Young Smart

Born 18 March 1862 in Dundee
Died 8 May 1921 in Glasgow

Update: in June 2026, a remarkable medal which was won by James Young Smart came up at auction. It was awarded for his success in Denmark in season 1887-88, and after fierce bidding it sold for well over the pre-sale estimate, realising 1600 euros plus commission.

Over a decade ago I wrote a blog about the biographies of Danish footballer Carl Hansen, who had played in Scotland for Rangers in the 1920s. 
   Better known as Carl Skomager ('shoemaker'), Hansen spent several harrowing months in prison during World War 2 when Denmark was occupied by the Germans. After the conflict ended he wrote a book about his experiences, Carl Skomager i tysk faengsel (in a German prison). Of course, the book was written in Danish and I thought it would be a great project for a translator to bring his story to a modern audience.
   I was delighted to be contacted by Rangers supporter Ian Hogg who took up the translation challenge and he has just published an ebook with Hansen's story in English, which he has made available free. Ian has kindly given me permission to post links to the book here, in the hope it will reach as wide an audience as possible.
   You will also be able to buy and download the ebook on Amazon, with any profits going to the Erskine Veterans Charity.

Epub file: click here
PDF file: click here

One of Musselburgh's earliest football trophies, the Simpson Shield, has come home after turning up at auction recently.
   I was lucky enough to be the winning bidder and have sold it on to Musselburgh Athletic president Kevin Liston, who has put it on permanent display in the clubhouse at Olivebank.
   The Simpson Shield was presented in 1891 by local publican William Simpson for Midlothian junior teams and it soon became a prestigious annual prize. Simpson ran the Forester's Arms in Fisherrow which is no longer there but stood on the corner of Bridge Street and North High Street.

The first winner of the Shield was Niddrie Blue Bell but local sides soon got in on the act with Musselburgh Windsor in 1894 and Musselburgh Fern in 1897. Other famous teams had their names inscribed on it including Arniston Rangers, Bonnyrigg Rose and Newtongrange Star before it returned home with Musselburgh Athletic – in a previous incarnation – winning it three times in 1912, 1914 and 1915.

There is a wonderful team photo after the 1912 victory, with the legendary Hearts captain and Scotland internationalist Bobby Walker sitting in the centre as honorary club president, with three trophies in front: the Dalmeny Cup, the East Lothian Cup and the Simpson Shield.
   However, the last of Musselburgh Athletic's wins, a 2-1 win over Loanhead Mayflower at Tynecastle on 22 May 1915, was played in a sombre mood as news was just coming in of the Quintinshill Rail Disaster that morning. It was the worst rail disaster in British history, leaving 226 dead, mainly from the 7th Battalion of the Royal Scots, most of whom came from Leith, Portobello and Musselburgh.

After Simpson died in 1922 the shield competition was wound up and the East of Scotland Junior FA donated the trophy to the local juvenile association, who continued to use it until at least the late 1950s. Records are sketchy but local winners included Musselburgh Imperial in 1932 and Inveresk Athletic in 1945.
   William Simpson left a local legacy that extended beyond football. He served Musselburgh town council for 33 years, many of them as Treasurer, and for a while he was Provost. He spent his life in the pub trade and gave up the Forester's Arms in 1895 when he married Catherine Montgomery, the owner of the Volunteer Arms, a wonderful historic pub now known as Stagg's and which was recently voted as CAMRA Scottish Pub of the Year.

Next time you hear someone singing Football's Coming Home, ask them where they think 'home' is. They might answer London, Sheffield or Cambridge; maybe even Glasgow.
   They would be wrong, as there is no single 'home of football' and many places can stake a claim. But one thing is certain: the world's first known club dedicated to football was founded over 200 years ago in Edinburgh. 
   Modern football can trace its roots to a winter's afternoon in 1824 when John Hope, a young law student, clubbed together with some friends to buy a leather ball and a bladder. They hired a grassy field in the suburbs, set up goalposts and started playing the game they loved.
   They called their new club, appropriately enough, The Foot-Ball Club and over the next seventeen years hundreds of young men joined in, paying a subscription to kick a ball about and enjoy vigorous exercise once or twice a week. It was a vibrant organisation whose influence spanned far and wide.
   Those football pioneers give Scotland's capital city every right to be celebrated as a 'home of football'. The sport thrived in Edinburgh decades before the Football Association was founded, long before the first attempts to codify the rules of association football, but although the Foot-Ball Club has tangible links to the modern game we know today, it made few waves at the time. Despite its popularity, the club kept such a low profile that there is barely a single mention of its activities in the newspapers of the day.
   It might even have been lost to history but thankfully John Hope was an obsessive hoarder who filed away every scrap of paper during his long life, an accumulation which amounted by the time of his death to over 200 boxes. They were carefully preserved by a succession of conscientious Edinburgh lawyers, and tucked away in those boxes were the football membership lists, the club accounts, correspondence with his fellow players and even a handwritten set of rules.
   The Foot-Ball Club records now rest in the National Records of Scotland, where they were rediscovered by Dr Neil Tranter of Stirling University in the 1990s. He waded through mountains of uncatalogued papers, some of which had not been touched for a century, and published his findings in an academic paper which opened to door to many other researchers, including myself.
   Today, much of John Hope's archive, including everything related to the Foot-Ball Club, has been digitised. It represents a treasure trove of immense historical significance, one which few other sporting organisations can emulate; for example, there is no equivalent archive for Hibs, Hearts, Rangers or Celtic.
   The papers are a vital part of Scotland's national heritage, as sporting history is not just about who scored which goal and when, it takes us into all sorts of unexpected places: Hope's club represents a wider picture of affluent society in the city of Edinburgh, the people who lived there, and their influence on the world about them.

The founder
 
John Hope, the instigator of the club, was an influential character in 19th century Edinburgh in many fields: a social reformer, a philanthropist, a town councillor, a fighter of causes and of course a sportsman.

Born in 1807 in Dalry House – which still stands, not far from Haymarket – Hope went to school and university in the city and became a lawyer like his father, following in his footsteps as a Writer to the Signet. He lived almost his entire life in the New Town, he was extremely wealthy, never married, and devoted his fortune and his boundless energy to causes he believed in.
   Some of his beliefs will be judged by today's standards as extreme, bigoted or blinkered. His views on religion, for example, included ferocious and sustained attacks on Popery, and he became so obsessed with abstinence from alcohol that he insisted his staff sign the pledge, and even fell out with churches over their use of fermented wine, rather than the unfermented variety, for communion.
   But he was also a passionate social reformer who spoke up for the poor and the downtrodden, for example leading a campaign to introduce the Saturday half-holiday for workmen in Edinburgh, organising regular excursions to the countryside for thousands of slum kids, and providing education to help them escape those slums.
   When he died in 1893, he was one of the city's richest men, having accumulated a fortune which would be worth about £50 million in today's money. He left most of his wealth to the Hope Trust, a religious charity, leaving his extended family distraught at getting nothing. They mounted a legal challenge which claimed he suffered from insane delusions when he wrote the will but after six years of wrangling, the family lost and the Hope Trust continues his work in temperance and religion to this day.
   Hope believed firmly in the benefits of sport and exercise, and could loosely be described as an advocate of Muscular Christianity, although of a particular Scottish variety.
   Most of all, though, he stands out today because he loved and promoted football. Hope and his friends had all played the game at the High School of Edinburgh, where generations of boys were actively encouraged to participate in sport and exercise. There are numerous references of football being a popular game in the school yards, back to Walter Scott's time.
   In the confined spaces of the High School Yards – an environment which has hardly changed in two hundred years since – there was a hard surface bounded by stone walls, where football evolved on a similar pattern to that enjoyed by boys at Charterhouse and Westminster in London. Right from the start of football history, players from these urban schools tended to favour the non-carrying game as full body tackling was likely to cause injury and damage to clothing, hence they became early advocates of association-type football.
 
Why form a football club?
 
At the dawn of the 19th century, football was generally considered a game for boys, not for responsible adults. John Hope and his friends broke that convention when they decided to carry on playing after leaving school, whether going up to University or into the world of work, and soon found that plenty of others were of the same mind.
   As well as a love of football, other key factors were the established sporting culture in Edinburgh and the fondness for middle and upper class men in the city subscribing to clubs where they not only played sport, they socialised together.
   There are a number of sporting world firsts for Edinburgh: in this city we had the first archery club (Royal Company of Archers, 1676), the first golf club (Burgess Golfing Society, 1735), the first gymnastic club (1786) and then, thanks to John Hope, the first football club in 1824.
   And where there are clubs, there are rules and competitions, cups and trophies. So again the city boasts several world firsts: in golf the Company of Gentlemen Golfers laid down rules which governed the Edinburgh Silver Club, both in 1744; in bowls the Edinburgh Society of Bowlers rules in 1769 led to the Edinburgh Silver Jack; in curling the rules of the Duddingston Curling Club were written in 1811; and – as we shall see – the earliest known rules of football.
   The template of organised sports clubs in Edinburgh was therefore well established by the 1820s, a decade which saw a national movement towards athletic and more vigorous sports. In this context, the formation of the Foot-Ball Club makes sense.
 
How did they play?
 
The Foot-Ball Club papers are a treasure trove of names, accounts, receipts and letters. Perhaps most important of all, there is a set of fledgling rules, written by John Hope in 1833. This represents the earliest known attempt at football codification, although the players must have had some kind of unwritten understanding before then. 

​His six brief instructions to players indicate a kicking game between opposing sides, with a defined playing surface and using goals as a method of scoring.
 
The first two rules indicate a concern for safety and a desire to avoid injury:

Single soled shoes, no iron
No tripping   

Rules three and four introduce the method of scoring, and a defined playing area:

Ball to pass imaginary line
A free kick if ball out of bounds  

Rule five indicates a controlled amount of physical contact:

Pushing is allowed. Holding not illegal  

Rule six appears to mean that the only time the ball could be handled was when it was out of play:

Allow the ball to be lifted between fields  

While there are no records of inter-club matches – these were guidelines for club members playing amongst themselves, wearing caps to distinguish the sides – there is a strong indication that John Hope and his friends played a precursor to what became association football. It certainly bore little relation to rugby, which permitted handling, carrying and running with the ball.
   A flavour of what it was like to play for the club can be found in the correspondence which is extensive, albeit largely limited to letters which Hope received, rather than those he sent. For example, in 1825 Henry Logan, a founding member who had gone to London, wrote to say how much he missed the action: 'How I envy you the pleasure you must have had the day there were 39 members out, such kicking of shins and such tumbling.'
   The style of play was also determined by the playing equipment, which can be discovered through the accounts. One receipt from James Christie and Son of George Street, shows that if you wanted a football in 1831 you had to have a leather case made specially and pay handsomely: the costs start at two shillings and sixpence.

The cases contained inflated pig bladders, which burst regularly so the club required a regular supply of fresh ones. This aspect was outlined in more detail in the accounts for 1834, in which the costs of the paraphernalia for playing football were itemised: three bladders at threepence each, six laces at a penny each, a tin pipe and wire. It went on to detail the purchase of oil, a cloth brush, a canvas bag, yet more bladders, and somewhat incongruously a bottle of whisky – which was used to clean out the bladders.
   The players also needed a regular venue so there is payment of ground rental, called 'grass rent' as the club played on a field which might otherwise have been used for grazing cattle. They moved several times during the life of the club, hiring fields which are now the suburbs of Dalry and Bruntsfield.
   And there was also payment to an attendant, to allow the players to focus on enjoying themselves. Right from the very start of the club, a boy was paid a shilling a week to blow up and repair the footballs, put up the goalposts and look after the equipment.
 
Who played football?
 
In 1824 John Hope was seventeen years old and had just matriculated as a student at Edinburgh University but while he was typical of the founders, the membership books record around 300 men over the next decade. They include students, schoolboys, soldiers and professional classes, and by researching their names, it has been possible to shed light on who these trailblazers were: where they lived and worked, where they were educated, and what their position was in society.
   Some men had a fleeting membership, some played for years, and three of them were members throughout the club's existence. The club had a buoyant first decade with upwards of sixty members each year before falling away to less than half that number.
   The early membership lists give only a name, then in the 1830s they also included an address which means it has been possible to identify who most of the members were, where they came from, and what they did with their lives. Not surprisingly, they were mostly young men who had been at school within Edinburgh. There are strong links to the High School, where most of Edinburgh male society in the early 19th century was educated, including John Hope and his father.
   But another school which features largely is the Edinburgh Academy, which opened in 1824 in direct competition to the High School, and over one third of those we have identified went there. The Academy subsequently played a crucial role in introducing rugby football to Scotland in the 1850s, yet it is clear that Academy boys played football for many years before then, and it was of the kicking rather than the carrying variety.
   A sizable proportion of members were schooled further afield before making their way to Edinburgh. Within Scotland, they came from the Scottish Borders to the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland, and many in between.
   There was also a scattering of English members. At that time Oxford and Cambridge universities only accepted Church of England conformists, so non-conformists and Roman Catholics were obliged to seek their higher education in Scotland or abroad, and Edinburgh University was a popular choice.

When these young men came to Edinburgh to study or to work, the fact that they chose to join the Foot-Ball Club infers that they had already played a form of football at home or school.
   For example, George Witham, an English member of the club in its first two years while a medical student, was a Roman Catholic who had been educated at Stonyhurst, a Jesuit school in Lancashire, which had a tradition of playing a form of football known as The Grand Match, with a pancake as a prize for the winners.
   The addresses in the membership rolls include virtually every major street in Edinburgh's New Town and less than ten per cent were in the suburbs. Apart from three in the vicinity of the University, none were in the historic Old Town, indicating that football was not yet a working class game.
   As for careers, while most members were students when they joined, almost all went on to be professional men such as lawyers, doctors, army officers, commerce and the church. There is no evidence of lower middle class occupations such as shopkeepers and clerks.
   Given Hope's family and professional connections, it is little surprise that the majority of the members whose careers have been identified became lawyers, and of those, most became Writers to the Signet. Then as now, Edinburgh was a city of lawyers, and many lawyers had the time, the affluence and the social status to join clubs and indulge in recreations.
   Among strong connections to medicine are a number of prominent surgeons and doctors such as Alexander Wood, who invented the hypodermic syringe, while six club members (or their brothers) became Presidents of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons or Physicians.
   There are numerous other stories about the club members as they made their way in life. Just as one quick example, several posed as subjects for the pioneering photographers, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in the 1840s. There are pictures of John Hope himself, James Rannie Swinton, Robert Dundas Cay and James Moncreiff, probably the first ever photographs of football players.
 
What was the club's legacy?
 
The Foot-Ball Club can be shown to have had a significant influence on the development of the game of football, with close links between its members and the next generation of footballers later in the century, men who played in the early codified games of rugby and association football.
   For example, there are two notable links to the captains of the first Scotland international teams, association and rugby, who were both sons of Foot-Ball Club members. James Kirkpatrick, captain of Scotland in the first unofficial association football international of 1870 and an FA Cup winner with Wanderers in 1878, was a son of Charles Sharpe Kirkpatrick, a member in 1831-32. Francis Moncreiff, Scotland's captain in the first international rugby match against England in 1871, was a son of James Moncreiff (a future Lord Advocate) who was a member in 1832-33.
   If you believe that sons learn from their fathers, that is a remarkable legacy, and the principle was repeated, with several other sons of members playing football in the 1860s and 1870s at school and at university.
   Despite this, John Hope is rarely given much credit for his contribution to the early development of football. Historians who research the origins of association game usually focus on the founding of the FA in 1863, on the public schools, on Sheffield and so on. For example, Sheffield FC, founded in 1857, claim to be 'the world’s first football club' and have actually incorporated the slogan into their crest. It simply isn't true. They might be the oldest surviving club, but the world's first? Not at all. That honour belongs to Edinburgh, and more specifically to John Hope.
   Unfortunately, Hope's organisational skills would prove to be a double-edged sword. Having run the club single-handedly, when he got too old to enjoy playing there was no-one suitable to take his place. The final item in the club's archive is a letter dated February 1841 from John G Campbell of 7 Great King Street, asking if three or four of his friends could join. Campbell knew the club well, having been a member ten years previously, but he was too late: around that time the Foot-Ball Club was wound up.
   There is currently little evidence of organised adult football being played in the city for the next few years but the 1850s witnessed another burst of football activity.
   In 1851 the Edinburgh University Football Club challenged the 93rd Highlanders, garrisoned in Edinburgh Castle, to a match. The losers agreed to present the winners with a silver medal, which is preserved in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders museum at Stirling Castle and is the world's oldest football prize. It depicts clearly a kicking, association-type, form of football, and that is backed up by newspaper reports which describe positional play, teamwork and organisation.
   As the 1850s progressed, John Hope continued to be a catalyst for football in the city. In 1854 he created a playing field at Stockbridge Park, where he encouraged boys to play football, writing 'the game is strongly recommended as giving most exercise and fun in a short time'.

He even printed rules of play which bear strong similarities not just to his 1833 rules, but also to the future codes for association football. For example: goals scored between the posts, no handling of the ball, teams wearing distinctive colours, and an insistence on sporting behaviour with no hacking (the great divide between rugby and what became association football).
   Unfortunately he could not renew his lease of Stockbridge Park, and this inadvertently opened the door to the handling game because in the same year, rugby football was introduced at the Edinburgh Academy. Rugby was soon taken up by the other principal schools in the city where it became the dominant code.
   However, the non-handling game continued to prosper among the working classes, and the laying out of the Meadows as a recreational space provided an accessible and free resource for young men to play football. There is plenty of evidence that the game was popular there throughout the 1860s.
   When the rules of association football finally came to Edinburgh, thanks to the missionary efforts of Queen's Park FC, it was John Hope who saw the potential and he encouraged the soldiers in his volunteer regiment, the Third Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers, to form one of the city's first clubs in 1874. He actually kicked off their first match, and when they won their first trophy in 1876, the Edinburgh Shield, it was presented not to the club captain, but to him.
   The Third ERV later evolved into St Bernard's FC, who won the Scottish Cup in 1895, and although John Hope wasn't around to see that triumph, having died two years earlier, he is part of a thread which runs all the way from the formation of the Foot-Ball Club in 1824 to victory in the national cup competition. It is a formidable legacy.
   John Hope and his footballers became not only significant figures in the ranks of 19th century Edinburgh society, they also made a major contribution to the game's progress. Scotland's capital really can make a claim to be a true home of football.
​

To read the full story, buy the book: 1824, The World's First Football Club is on sale from Amazon price £10, post free in the UK.

One of the pioneers of Hibernian Football Club, which was founded exactly 150 years ago today, has literally left his mark on the city's streets. But you have to look carefully to find him. 
   Pat Cavanagh was at the club's founding meeting on 6 August 1875 in St Mary's Street Hall and soon became an integral part of the team formed from Edinburgh's Irish Catholic community. A natural leader, he was elected captain in 1879 and inspired Hibs to their earliest triumphs, winning three consecutive Edinburgh FA Cups, followed by the Edinburgh FA Shield twice and the Rosebery Cup.

For that alone he deserves respect as a Hibs legend, but after he hung up his boots in 1884 he went into the construction business. A plasterer to trade, his company specialised in laying floors and pavements, and became a leading contractor for Edinburgh Council when they undertook street improvements towards the end of the nineteenth century.

Warriston Close was reopened in 1902 after being formed in granolithic concrete by Cavanagh, and his work was praised by the Council's Streets and Building Committee who said it had been 'very satisfactorily carried out'. Testament to that is the condition of the steps which remain sound after over 120 years in use. Cavanagh's plate is one flight up, between the central handrails. ​

There is another example of his work just south of the Meadows in Hatton Place, a quiet suburban street, at its junction with Tantallon Place. His brass sign is set proudly in the concrete, which Cavanagh's men laid in the 1890s and is still in good condition.
​   However, another sign a couple of streets away in Palmerston Road has been cut in half, probably due to the laying of a modern interloper such as an internet cable. Tellingly, however, the Cavanagh half is in better condition than its modern cement replacement.
   How much longer will these evocative remnants of Edinburgh’s Victorian past survive? It may only be a matter of time before they are resurfaced and signs of Pat Cavanagh's endeavours are obliterated for ever, although there is a glimmer of hope that their significance to the city's heritage will be recognised.
   Edinburgh Council's Street Design Guidance acknowledges the historic importance of granolithic concrete, and states 'There should be a presumption in favour of retaining and repairing areas of historic paving'.
   Keep an eye open for any more brass plates celebrating Pat Cavanagh. His company was responsible for laying pavements all around Edinburgh so there must be more of them. Where are they? Let me know what you find.

At this year's Football History Conference in Belfast, I gave a talk on the Netflix Series The English Game, which came out five years ago. I was interested in exploring whether and how the series has influenced the study of football history.
   You can read my full illustrated talk by clicking on this link (which will open a pdf).
   Much of my involvement in the programme went back to my previous research on Fergie Suter and Jimmy Love, the Scottish protagonists of the story, and my biography of Arthur Kinnaird. You can read about them in my blog, or just look for 'Suter' or  'Kinnaird'  in the search box top right.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts. Do you think The English Game has been a force for good, and brought more people into football history, or has it simply muddied the waters, provoking needless arguments?
   More widely, is drama the best way to cover football history, or do you think it would be better to focus on factual, and accurate, documentary?
   And finally, what topics or stories are crying out to be covered by the big screen?
   Please leave any comments below.