Cuthbertson delves through the archives
Photographer John Cuthbertson has been delving through the archives to document the history of Corsham Town in a new book and has recently been discussing some of his findings on the Toolstation Western League podcast with Ian Nockolds.
Asked where the idea began, Cuthbertson said: “About two and a half years ago I started thinking the club’s history has not been documented anywhere, so as I’ve been doing the website since the early 2000s where you start building up some statistics, players appearances, goals etc, I thought I’d start to find out about the history of the club and what I thought was going to be a little book, or a little document, its grown into quite a beast actually, just over a 1,000 pages in total.
“I started investigating and one of the greatest resources for getting this information was the central library up in Swindon.
“So I got into a routine, because I’m retired, of going up to Swindon every Tuesday on the train, getting into the library and I’d already prebooked my microfiche reader and printer and all this.
“I started getting on well with the people up there and started to become a regular.
“I’d spend about four hours each time as that’s about as much as my eyes could handle on the old microfiche as it zooms page after page after page so you get a bit word-blind. I started finding out then going all the way back to 1878 for the football club, when everybody was under the impression from some work that had been done years and years ago that the club was founded about 1884, but I’ve back-tracked it to 1878 when they happened to play a little team called Melksham Town. That was in February 1878 and unfortunately, from my point of view, Melksham won 1-0.”
Alongside Corsham, Cuthbertson has also been able document a number of near rivals as the teams clashed over the years.
He said: “Within the book, because Corsham’s a Wiltshirebased side, there’s lots of references to Calne Town, Westbury, Devizes, Bradford and Melksham, so even though the book is primarily about the history of Corsham, all the way through the book will be references back to all these other local clubs because Corsham were one of the original founding members of the Wiltshire League and, just as a side note, the Wiltshire League started in 1894 and the first winners of the Wiltshire League were Corsham Town.
“Now quite interestingly, there was a close run race between a team called Southbroom which is now Devizes Town, it was neck and neck and the final game of the season meant that the winning team would be winning the league by goal difference.
“There was a bit of an uproar come the end of this because Corsham went to play at Calne and
Corsham won 17-1 and it turned out that Calne Town didn’t like Southbroom because they were playing ringers of military personnel coming down from Aldershot to play for them and so for the newspaper cuttings of the day, it was not a pleasant time for everybody to explain the goings on.
“Actually in the research I’ve found somebody had donated a winner’s medal to Corsham Town which was being held by somebody, so I was able to go and photograph the winner’s medal from 1894 and it’s a very elaborate looking medal, it’s not one of your standard round disc, it’s a very fancy-looking medal.
“It’s got Wiltshire Football League on the front and on the back it’s got Corsham winners 1894/95, and it all went on from there.”
One of the things that surprised Cuthbertson was just how big a project documenting the history ended up being.
He said: “What I thought was going to be a few months of research ended up being just about two and a bit years.
“I’ve got right the way through. The plan was to finish it at the end of this season but when that was cut short for the reasons we all know, the line’s drawn under the book as April 2020, so the book goes from 1878 all the way through to April 2020.
“I’ve set it up in basically three sections, because it does run to 21 chapters, and the three sections are what I call the first section is ‘First Half’ and in that is the beginning from 1878 and that takes them through to 1997 when the club moved from what was the Wiltshire League to the Western League.
“So there’s eight chapters in the first part which is called the ‘First Half,’ the second volume which I’ve quite easily called the ‘Second Half’ is all about the Western League, so everything to do with the Western League, our championship year in 2006/07, winning the Les Phillips Cup in 2005/06 and all our time in the Western League from the 1998/99 season, including a whole chapter on tables, results and statistics.
“I’m a bit of a stats man, I love my stats. So there’s stacks of that. And then the third section of the book, as there was ‘First Half’ and ‘Second Half,’ is called ‘Extra Time,’ so that’s got in the FA Cup, the FA Vase, Wilts Senior Cup, a chapter on the Reserves, youth and the A team, matchday programmes and the normal acknowledgements a little bit about myself.
“Going into a bit of side interest, the oldest programme I’ve got is 1950 in the FA Cup, Corsham Town at home to Warminster Town another Wiltshire side and I’m pleased to say Corsham won 3-2. I’ve even got the match report and the goalscorers all in the book.
“Unfortunately in the next round, which again I’ve got the programme for, Corsham were away to Trowbridge Town who were a few leagues above Corsham back then and there were 2,673 at that game, Corsham took over 300 supporters to the game and as things were back in the day, Trowbridge were good enough to send over two coaches as Corsham couldn’t get enough coaches to help ferry the Corsham supporters over to the game. Trowbridge won that one 6-1.”
Unsurprisingly, Cuthbertson managed to unearth some interesting and previously unknown facts about Corsham, along with some former famous players who went on to perform in the professional ranks.
He said: “The first one to be honest was winning the inaugural Wiltshire League, that was one of them, the record as I mentioned in the FA Cup, record attendances, we always thought our record attendance when we were in the Western League we had an FA Cup game against Newport County and I think it was 550 we had at that game which was great to see the Southbank lined with 550 people, but I found out in the 52/53 season Corsham played Chippenham Town at home and there was over 1,200 at that game.
“So those sorts of stats were interesting to come across.
“A little side one I came across, the company who is going to be producing the book for me, publishing and printing, Chris Perry and his team at Corsham Print, they’ve actually been providing the matchday programme for Corsham since 1984 which is 36 years, the same group of guys doing the programme for us and the Corsham programme has won quite a few of the Toolstation Western League awards over the years.
“For actual facts and figures, we’ve had some famous players for Corsham over the years, I found a player that used to play for West Ham United in the West Ham United archives, there was a picture of him, date of birth and playing career which is all in the West Ham archives showing you that he was at Corsham Town and then where he went.
“We obviously had Darren Eadie who was a Corsham lad who went on to play for Norwich City and the most recent one is Tyrone Mings, because Tyrone Mings people might not realise, made his senior debut in football in 2010/11 season for Corsham Town when he played five games for us and scored one.
“Little side note on that one, I sent some pictures for Tyrone a few years ago, commenting some of my early pictures of him and he came back and remembered, bearing mind he’s 6ft 5’ and a gladiator, well back then he wasn’t quite built like that, he was very fast and strong, but he commented ‘I remember I came on as sub, the shirts were so big that as I was running along the shirt felt like it was a parachute on my back,’ that’s how big it was.
“So yeah there’s all-sorts of things turned up in the 1,018 pages of the book, 439 photos and 697 newspaper cuttings, spread throughout those three sections of the book. There’s something for everybody and I’ve got to thank Chris at Corsham Print for agreeing to publish and print it for me.”
■ NEXT week, John Cuthbertson reveals how his love affair with Corsham Town began and what it was that got him into photography.