Nunhead F.C.


Nunhead Football Club were an English football club from Nunhead, Greater London. The club were prominent in southern English non-league football prior to World War II, but ceased all playing activities at the end of the 1940–41 season, and formally folded in 1949.

History

Founded as Wingfield House Football Club in 1888, the club changed its name to Nunhead F.C. in 1904.
The 1920s and 1930s were probably the most successful period in the club's history, with the team winning the London Senior Cup in 1923 and the Isthmian League championship twice in successive seasons in 1928–29 and 1929–30.
During the 1926–27 season, Nunhead reached the FA Cup second round, losing 2–1 to Poole. The campaign was also notable for Nunhead setting a record for the highest margin of victory by a non-league side in an FA Cup round proper match when they beat Kingstonian 9–0 in the first round. In the 1931–32 season Nunhead were on the receiving end of that same nine goal margin of victory record when they lost 9–0 in the FA Cup first round to Bath City.
In the mid-1930s Denis Compton played for the club. He would go on to play for Arsenal and England.
The Second World War, the termination by the landlords of the club's lease on Brown's Ground, and other financial difficulties led to the end of the club. Day-to-day operations and all playing activities ceased at the end of the 1940–41 season, with the club surviving only on paper until 1949 when they officially resigned from the Football Association and folded.
The site of the club's ground now forms part of the playing fields of the Haberdashers Askes Federation. As late as the early 1980s the old football club's dressing rooms were used by the Haberdashers Aske's boys school where they were affectionately referred to as the "Cowsheds".
In 2019, 80 years after the club had folded, a group of Nunhead residents began fundraising for charity in the name of Nunhead Football Club. To celebrate the 90th anniversary of Nunhead's consecutive Isthmian League title wins, a visual archive of the club's history was published online.

Notable former players