From: Bob Freeman
Swadlincote Derbyshire
I was born in on New Year’s Eve 1919 in Bellwood Road, Nunhead. When I was about ten I went with my dad to watch Nunhead Football Club who played in the Isthmian League and I went whenever they were at home. The local derby match was against Dulwich Hamlet, captained by Edgar Kail, who was a cousin of my mother; my parents were also friendly with the Nunhead goalkeeper, Eric Mulley. We went to the ground through an alleyway off Ivydale Road and had many happy times there with a crowd of possibly around 250, until the Club had to close when the ground was sold. It will be interesting if anyone else remembers Nunhead Football Club.
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From: Cllr Ian Wingfield
Town Hall, Peckham Road, SE5 8UB.
As a Nunhead resident I was interested to read about Nunhead FC in issues 108 and 110, so I decided to find out more about the club. I was surprised to learn from Mick Blakeman’s excellent history of Nunhead FC that the football club was started when a group of Stock Exchange members decided to set up a home for working boys in Stamford Street, Blackfriars, in 1888. Imagine then my greater surprise on learning that in 1894 the home was moved to Wingfield House at 261 South Lambeth Road, Stockwell, and the football club was renamed the Wingfield House Football Club! It was also in this period, under Charles A. Stein, that the Club began to achieve greater things. The Club dropped the name Wingfield House FC in 1904 to become Nunhead FC. Interestingly, Wingfield House became the Jersey Home for Working Lads in 1911 which probably indicates that this group of stockbrokers shared a genuine objective of improving the lot of working-class boys.
