Football

I posted recently about the sad demise of Macclesfield Town Football Club after 146 years of existence. The club was inaugurated by men of the local 8th Cheshire Rifle Volunteers way back in 1876 when they first formed Macclesfield F.C.. The Victorian association formed between football and soldiering continued on into the First World War, being most particularly expressed in those footballs being kicked forward to launch British attacks on the first day of the Somme and, of course, in the famous 1914 Christmas Truce where impromptu football matches were played between the warring sides in no-man’s land.

Mark at Man of Tin blog, suggested I paint a footballer as a tribute to the demise of a club once begun by rifle volunteers, he having himself once done the same for one of the great contributors to wargaming, Donald Featherstone on the centenary of his birth, (Featherstone was Southampton FC’s physio for a number of years).

Although, I have some Airfix footballers somewhere, I was further inspired by Mark’s recommendation that I check out “Replica Soldiers and Models“. This impressive website, amongst many other things, includes recast Britains old footballer figures (see above). I really liked the idea of using Britains 54mm classic figures to reproduce early football pioneers. It seemed particularly appropriate, and so ordered this running figure.

Although I was familiar with the colours of Macclesfield Town in recent years, the question was – what colours did Macclesfield’s early footballing rifle volunteers adopt?

*Copyright Historical Football Kits and reproduced by kind permission.*

Thankfully, the ever-marvellous internet led me to an excellent resource called Historical Football Kits, which had all the information I needed to recreate the original strip. I opted for the earliest known uniform (above-left) which would have been worn by those rifle volunteers. The information for this kit was itself taken from the 2001 book “Saga of the Silkmen – The History of Macclesfield Town FC” by Graham Phythian. Sadly, it seems that the long saga which this author carefully documented has now come to an end.

Or has it?…

A recent report in the news announced that a ‘phoenix club’ for Macclesfield is in the process of being born, with former Premier League player and Welsh international Robbie Savage joining the board. The turf at the old ground Moss Rose is already being considered for resurfacing in a manner ‘that will allow more community use in an effort to generate funds’. In the meantime, a lot is happening over at the Silkmen Supporters Trust as they look to shape and support the formation of a new Macclesfield football club.

Meanwhile, I’ve been quietly painting my small tribute to the original Macclesfield Football Club which was first founded by those local Victorian rifle volunteers so many years ago – and here is the result:

Let me tell you, it’s remarkable just how tricky it is to freehand paint narrow parallel hoops on a curved surface! I have now developed a real respect for football strip painters everywhere and in particular those early hand-painters at Subbuteo Sports Games Ltd in Langton Green in the 1960s….

In painting my early ‘silkman’, I’ve sort-of approximated the classic Britains style, which this figure demands, and gloss-varnished him too. He looks rather impressive in my display cabinet!

Silkmen Picture Archives includes some very old photographs of some of Macclesfield’s early footballers including one going back to 1896 and is worth checking out.

**“Play up! Play up! And play the game!”**

I really enjoyed painting a football strip for a change, a challenge that was satisfyingly simple yet at the same time tricky. What’s that? Why not paint another, you say? The whole team?! A whole league?!!! …

Followers of English football may have noted the very sad ending of a football club which could boast an impressive 146 year long history. The club in question was Cheshire’s Macclesfield Town who went by the nickname The Silkmen. What has this to do with Suburban Militarism, you may well ask? The answer lies in the club’s formation way back in 1873, something which piqued my interest. According to Wikipedia;

“The beginnings of Macclesfield Town Football Club can be traced, at least in part, to the 8th Cheshire Rifle Volunteers who were formed in 1873 and played regularly in Macclesfield from October 1874. It was agreed at a public meeting on 21 October 1876 that the 8th Cheshire Rifle Volunteers and the Olympic Cricket club teams be merged to form Macclesfield F.C.; initially matches alternated between association and rugby rules.“

Bridge Street Drill Hall, Macclesfield. Wikipedia. By Peter Barr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Some research reveals that the headquarters of the 8th Cheshire Rifle Volunteers was the Bridge Street Drill Hall, seen above. This rather impressive building opened in 1871, just two years before members of this rifle volunteer corps formed what would be the genesis of Macclesfield’s 146-year old football club.

Illustration of a Cheshire Rifle Volunteer from “Redington’s New Twelves of Rifle Volunteer Corps“, a coloured print of 12 different Rifle Volunteer figures. Published by J. Redington of London, c.1860.

With the Childers reforms, this unit become the 5th Volunteer Battalion of the local Cheshire Regiment in 1883. Later, with the formation of the Territorial Force, it became the 7th Battalion, The Cheshire Regiment in 1908. At the onset of hostilities in the Great War, men of the battalion were mobilised at the Bridge Street drill hall in August 1914 prior to being sent off to Gallipoli and the Western Front.

Some further research reveals something of the 8th Cheshire’s formation and uniform courtesy of the “Historical Records of the 5th Administrative Battalion Cheshire Rifle Volunteers“.

“On the 31st December the Queen accepted the services of a Corps at Macclesfield, consisting of one Company, under Captain Samuel Pearson, late Lieutenant 1st Dragoon Guards. The uniform was grey, trimmed with black lace, and long loops for the Officers, velvet facings, and a kepi. The accoutrements were of brown leather. This Corps was numbered the 8th Cheshire.”

The book includes the lovely illustration seen above of the 5th Cheshire in 1859. The description of a grey uniform also bears a passing resemblance to another Cheshire Rifle Volunteer Corps – the 1st, also known as The Cheshire Greys.

I modelled a small diorama of the Cheshire Greys in their 1880s incarnation wearing Home Service Pattern helmets and firing Martini-Henry rifles. I suppose the 8th Cheshire RVC could have looked much the same at around this time.

The 1st Cheshire Rifle Volunteers, “The Cheshire Greys” c.1880.

I’ve written before of how the Victorian Rifle Volunteer movement, with it’s emphasis on locally raised units, could be as much a social as a military endeavour featuring dances, shooting competitions and other events all adding to the camaraderie and cohesion of the units. It seems that, as with the formation of Macclesfield’s football club, sport was also a key feature of the Rifle Volunteer movement. In Macclesfield’s case, the sporting legacy of these local men endured for 164 years until a High Court decision last Wednesday.

Moss Rose – h ome ground of Macclesfield Town.

The Guardian. Sept 17th 2020 includes this epitaph to the club;

The town of Macclesfield itself is, as the New Order drummer and Silkmen fan Stephen Morris put it, “a mill town that had lost the adjective ‘thriving’ somewhere along the way”. Its high street is pockmarked by boarded-up shops. The football club, like the old Majestic cinema and the many closed pubs on the London Road walk up to the Moss Rose, appears destined to become another lost community asset.

Notably, Bridge Street drill hall, Wikipedia reports “was decommissioned and has since been converted into apartments.” The long legacy of the Rifle Volunteer movement, it seems, has sadly finally come to an end in Macclesfield.