Er Neafcy

Towns of the 92 English Football League Clubs and their Historic Diversity

TOWNS OF THE 92 ENGLISH FOOTBALL LEAGUE CLUBS by E R Neafcy takes the reader beyond the well known and much loved football clubs of England to the places and towns where the clubs have grown. These place names tell a tale of the diversity of people that lived there and their ways of life. This booklet covers the towns and settlements from which grew the 92 clubs of the English Football League. Some of the stories are surprising. The old English town of 'Northworthy' was later changed by Danish settlers to 'Derby'. The Normans found difficulty in pronouncing 'sn' and so changed 'Snotinghame' to 'Nottingham'. 16th century Spanish occupation of the Netherlands made Norwich first an asylum destination, then a world centre for canary breeding which accounts for the nickname and colours of the football club. The name London, the best known place-name in England, is conspicuously absent and does not appear in the name of any football club. Lots of the towns' coats of arms are of great antiquity. Often they indicate how the town sees itself, or used to. Not all of the town councils have registered a coat of arms with the College of Arms. Though the arms of many may be a faithful attempt to represent the town's story, a coat of arms need not be a solemn piece of work. The royal coat of arms appears in the nation's courts of justice. It features a unicorn, a fictitious animal. A word in a town's motto might suggest an image that has nothing to do with the town's story but is in some way funny, or is an 'in-joke' that locals understand. Why then not put that image in the heraldry, as Oldham, Rochdale, Sheffield and Wigan do?