Blue plaque installed in Yorkshire to mark world’s first church football club

The latest commemorates Cemetery Road Church Football Club (1861), the oldest and first football club in the world to begin from a church.

It is the first in a new series of blue plaques to be unveiled in Sheffield on by the charity working to establish a footballing heritage museum and raise awareness of Sheffield’s unique football history.

The plaque marks Cemetery Road Church FC, as the first football club in the world to originate from a church. It has been approved for erection on the spot where the club was founded in 1861, which is now the Nuffield Health Sheffield Fitness and Wellbeing Gym on Napier Street.

Steve Wood, a trustee with Sheffield Home Of Football (SHOF), said the earliest football clubs often began as off-shoots of other sporting organisatons.

He said: “The members of this world’s first club came from the Cemetery Road Congregational Church which was in the Porter Brook area of Sheffield close to Sheffield General Cemetery.

“The church unfortunately no longer exists, but its location was in the south-west corner of what is now the Nuffield Health gymnasium car park, on the corner of Cemetery Road and Summerfield Street.

“The very earliest known organised football clubs first originated from already organised sporting outfits, mainly cricket clubs. Sheffield FC, Hallam FC, Norton FC, Norfolk FC and Pitsmoor FC all had links to pre-existing cricket clubs.

“It didn’t take long for other football clubs to start forming from other organised social groups.

"In the early 1860s football clubs started to form from workplaces, schools, hotels, pubs, gymnasiums, the volunteer movement, the military and of course from churches.”

He added: “Many well-known clubs today can trace their origins back to starting as a church team. A few of these clubs you might have heard of such as Manchester City, Everton, Liverpool, Birmingham City, Fulham, Aston Villa, Tottenham Hotspur, Southampton, Celtic, Barnsley, Bolton Wanderers to name just a few.

“The earliest records we have of the club are from a club meeting on the 5th of November 1861. We also have reports of the club organising matches at Hunters Bar around the same period.

“It’s no surprise that during the early years of association football development, many churches across the country started to create their own football clubs.”

He said the mid to late 1800s was a period when the philosophical movement ‘Muscular Christianity’, was at its peak. Muscular Christianity would have driven the desire of many young Victorian Christian men to form organised clubs from their own church communities.

Sheffield can also boast the world’s oldest surviving church to have formed a football club, this being Heeley Christ Church FC a year after Cemetery Road Church in 1862.

He said: “Jack Hunter, England’s first working class captain came from this club. You can find out more about Jack Hunter on our website.

“Next time you are in the Cemetery Road area of Sheffield, going past the Nuffield Health Gym car park, contemplate that this was the spot that many of the world‘s now famous football clubs, first gained their inspirational origins from.

Nicki Cox, Operations Manager for Nuffield Health in Sheffield, said: “At Nuffield Health we are all thrilled to learn about the world class historic sporting links we have to the history of association football.

“We never realised so many world famous football clubs can link their origins back to our gym.”

There will be more blue plaques going up around the city in the next few months as part of our guided football walks around the city celebrating the people and the places which made Sheffield the first city of football,

Mr Wood said: “We are very grateful to Nuffield Health for supporting this initiative.”

Sheffield already has the world’s oldest football club. Sheffield Football Club is an English football club from Dronfield, North East Derbyshire, is recognised by FIFA as the oldest existing club still playing football in the world. Sheffield F.C. initially played games under the Sheffield Rules and did not officially adopt the new FA rules until 1878.