The HF have launched a fundraiser for a display for the Villa game on the 27th of November to mark 160 years since the club's beginnings in 1861.

Anyone who would like to donate and help commemorate this historic moment can do so here [Link]

Edited by gav (12 Oct 2021 11.06pm)

The club didn't begin in 1861

The club have accepted our foundation date is 1861. The evidence provided by Peter Manning is pretty compelling. The club have marked our 160th anniversary. I believe the FA will endorse this officially soon. We are effectively the oldest professional football club in existence.

who's this Peter Manning fella? Any links to his evidence. I've only seen a bit about this and thought it looked like the 1861 Crystal Palace was only linked via namesake and nothing to do with the club we support.

ok, so I looked it up myself. [Link]

This is the killer paragraph:

“I was always aware of, if you like, the club ‘legend’ that there had been a team in 1861 but that it was not connected to today’s club. Now that we can show that it was, by virtue of it always having been the team of the Crystal Palace and its owners, the Crystal Palace Company, from 1861 onwards, we can claim to be the oldest professional league club in the world.”

Edited by Frickin Saweet (13 Oct 2021 3.56pm)

If I were to be pedantic I would say that we were not a fully fledged professional club until 1905 therefore (accepted it IS indeed the same club) but as a professional club we didn't start out until 1905.

I think there's not much argument now that the club was formed in 1861, and the professional club launched in 1905. It doesn't make much difference to me that as an institution our operating status changed (from amateur to professional) 44 years after our founding; that's an irrelevant detail. As long as a continuous thread can be established that runs from the original organisation through the one which became professional - and it has been established - I'm happy with the 1865 date (and I tend to be quite pedantic about this sort of change, usually being indisposed to accept revisionist history). Let's be honest, if Carshalton Athletic suddenly turned full-time pro next week, none of us would question if it was still Carshalton Athletic. The only wonder is it took so long for someone to do the research and work this out.

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.