Bumping this thread back as a new book has recently been published, called Palace At The Palace, which, for the first time, covers the entire history of the Crystal Palace Company, the company which owned and managed our spiritual home, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham.

It takes a forensic look at its relationship with the Crystal Palace football club, dispelling a number of myths.

Like a number of major soccer teams today, e.g. Spurs, Derby and the two Sheffields, the amateur Crystal Palace developed out of a cricket club, in our case the Crystal Palace Cricket Club, which played at Sydenham.

The book reveals that the members of the Crystal Palace football club of 1861 had school and business links to the other F.A. Founding Fathers and a much more important and central role in the founding of the Football Association and the launch of soccer than has previously been recognised.

It also forensically examines how and why the professional Crystal Palace club was founded in 1905, dispelling a number of widely held myths and adding a lot of new verifiable information about its foundation.

Looked at from the perspective of the Crystal Palace Company there are now very good reasons why the 1861 amateur Palace team can be said to be connected to today’s club, especially when compared with the way other clubs claim their histories. It’s a unique history and, based on the book’s research, Palace would be well within its rights to claim to be the oldest professional football league club in the world.

Also, when there was only one club, who did they play against?

Great thread by the way, excellent cachet in being the world's oldest club!

Those involved in the formation of this club did not attempt to claim any link to the former club of the same name, and that was just 29 years after the other club became defunct, when the history would have been a lot clearer. We celebrated our centenary in 2005, not 1961 and we have 1905 on our badge.

The suggestion that, because the club shop have elected to stock this latest learned tome, suggests an endorsement by the club of its contents is entirely specious. It is the equivalent of suggesting that bookshops that sell Nietzsche or music shops that stock Wagner tacitly endorse their repulsive ideas.

If we were to suddenly try to claim to be the oldest football club in the world, after 113 years, we wouldn't receive opposition, it would be much worse. We'd be the laughing stock of the entire football universe and, let's face it, we've proved that we're quite capable of that lately, without adding any more fuel to the fire.

Edited by bexleydave (20 Dec 2018 7.45am)

My mother (86), a keen genealogist who has no interest in football and has never been near the internet, often tells me about my great great grandfather Reg Blackshill (possibly spelt differently).

Apparently he was a foreman for a construction company (supposedly building The Crystal Palace) and he formed the Crystal Palace Football team from a group of workers sometime in the mid-to-late 1800s. I've never found his name mentioned online but the story is embedded in our family folklore. As is the way of such things, the story has probably been embellished but it would be lovely to think one of my ancestors helped to found the club I've supported avidly all my life.

If anyone can shed any further light on this I'd be very happy.