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The football clubs and stadia of Greater London
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More than ever, London plays a vital role on the English football scene. Only the county of Lancashire (in its full historic
extent) rivals the capital in the significance of its football heritage and the strength of club representation at the top
level of the league hierarchy.
London’s oldest professional football club is Fulham FC, which is usually considered to have been founded in 1879. Seventeen
years later the club moved to its present home ground: Craven Cottage. The Hammersmith end of that stadium is shown in the
image below. Leyton Orient, Tottenham Hotspur, QPR, Arsenal, Millwall, Barnet and Brentford began playing in the 1880s (mostly
under variant identities from their present ones) and West Ham United in 1895. Charlton Athletic, Chelsea and Crystal Palace
are relative newcomers, all established in 1905.
 Most of the leading football clubs were founded
either as boys’ clubs (often linked to schools, churches, missions or Sunday schools) or as the works teams of major
employers, notably in industries relating to London’s docks – like West Ham, which began life as Thames Ironworks
FC.
Two clubs have crossed the river from their places of origin; Millwall moved from the Isle of Dogs to the Bermondsey/New Cross
border in 1910 and Arsenal went in the opposite direction, from Woolwich to Highbury, in 1913.
London’s newest club is Hayes and Yeading FC, created in May 2007 from the merger of two near neighbours in the London
Borough of Hillingdon. Although Yeading had been the more successful of the pair in recent years, Hayes appear to be the dominant
force in the new partnership.
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 In addition to the grounds of its many professional
clubs, London boasts the ‘home of English football’, in the form of the newly rebuilt Wembley Stadium (shown above),
which was opened in March 2007 after many embarrassing delays. The stadium has a capacity of 90,000 and, like its legendary
predecessor, hosts major concerts as well as all the main events of the English footballing calendar.
As the map below
shows, the top football clubs are fairly evenly spread across London, with the leading professional teams tending to play
nearer the centre, while the non-league outfits are mostly in the outer boroughs and/or south of the river. One borough –
Hammersmith and Fulham – has three professional clubs; no other borough has more than one.
The map includes clubs
from the Premiership down to the Conference South. The void in the north-western corner is filled by three teams in the tier
below the Conference South: Harrow Borough, Hendon and Wealdstone, while AFC Wimbledon fill a gap in the south-west.
The
outermost London teams now playing in the Football League are Barnet FC and Dagenham & Redbridge. The latter were champions
of the Nationwide Conference in 2006–7 and have only been in existence since 1992, following the completion of a series
of mergers that brought together Ilford, Leytonstone, Walthamstow Avenue and Dagenham FC.
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London’s top football clubs in 2007–8
– mapped and then listed alphabetically within divisions
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Club
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League/Division
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Nickname
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Ground
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Arsenal
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Premiership
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The Gunners
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Emirates Stadium
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Chelsea
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Premiership
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The Blues
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Stamford Bridge
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Fulham
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Premiership
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The Cottagers/Whites
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Craven Cottage
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Tottenham Hotspur
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Premiership
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Spurs
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White Hart Lane
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West Ham United
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Premiership
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The Hammers/Irons
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Boleyn Ground, Upton Park
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The Addicks
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The Valley
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Crystal Palace
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Championship
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The Eagles
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Selhurst Park
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Queen’s Park Rangers
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Championship
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The Hoops/Superhoops
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Loftus Road
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Leyton Orient
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League One
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The O’s
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Matchroom Stadium, Brisbane Rd
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Millwall
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League One
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The Lions
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New Den Stadium
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Barnet
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League Two
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The Bees
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Underhill Stadium
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Brentford
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League Two
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The Bees
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Griffin Park
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Dagenham & Redbridge
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League Two
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The Daggers
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Victoria Road
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Bromley
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Conference South
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The Lillywhites
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Courage Stadium, Hayes Lane
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Fisher Athletic
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Conference South
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The Fish
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Champion Hill (until 2009)
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Hampton & Richmond Borough
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Conference South
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The Beavers
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Beveree Stadium
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Hayes and Yeading
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Conference South
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The Missioners
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Church Road
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Sutton United
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Conference South
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The U’s
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Borough Sports Ground
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Welling United
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Conference South
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The Wings
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Park View Road
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One level below the Conference (Blue Square) South
clubs in the 2007–8 season are AFC Hornchurch, AFC Wimbledon, Carshalton Athletic, Harrow Borough, Hendon and Leyton
in the Isthmian (Ryman) League Premier Division, and Wealdstone in the Southern (British Gas Business) League Premier Division.
Text and images are reproduced with the permission of Chambers but may differ from the published versions
All content © 2005–2008
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