I’ve just obtained my oldest piece of Palace memorabilia, the Palace Year Book for 1914/15, the year they left the old Crystal Palace following the outbreak of World War 1. Really chuffed to get hold of this as, unless the club has a copy, I’m not aware of another one in existence.

I’ve scanned and uploaded the front cover if anyone’s interested. Some interesting snippets from it:

• Palace played in Southern League Div 1 while the reserves played in the London League Div 1 and the Kent League Div 1. The reserves had scored 159 goals in 47 matches in 13/14 and Palace missed out on the Southern League Div 1 title to Swindon on goal difference.

• Palace had won the London Cup for the second year running, beating Spurs in the Final

• The club’s colours were ‘Cardinal and Blue Jerseys and White Knickers’ (cardinal is generally considered a brighter red than claret)

• The club’s President was the Earl of Plymouth

• Palace had been on a three week pre-season tour of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in May 1914

• The Upper Norwood Prize Band (a leading brass band of the time) was the season’s half time entertainment

• Admission was six old pence (3p) and another sixpence for a seat in the covered stand.

• A good pair of football boots cost 12/6 (63P), the equivalent of standing admission to 21 matches

• Edmund Goodman was still both Secretary and Manager of the club. He was given credit that he ‘had practically organised the Club’ (since its founding in 1905) having previously been Assistant Secretary at Aston Villa for five years.

• The FA Cup was then known as the English Cup

• The players were a mix of professionals and amateurs. One of Palace’s amateurs was a vicar, the Rev Kenneth Hunt, who had won an English (FA) Cup winners medal with Wolves in 1908

• Amateur players could play for more than one club at the same time. A Popple played for both Dulwich Hamlet and Palace

• The first owner of the handbook had filled in all the scores for the 14/15 season until 27th March. Was that when he was called up?

There was also quite a bit about English (FA) Cup history as the Crystal Palace was then the venue for the final, including this fascinating description of the very first final.

“In the first Final of the English Cup Competition, played in 1872 at the Oval, between the Wanderers and the Royal Engineers, there was a referee (whose position was a sinecure) and two umpires. The latter had to judge whether the goals were fair, or not. There were no goal nets. There was a goalkeeper, one back, one half back, and the remainder were really forwards. Caps were worn, also long flannel trousers, belts and brown boots with spikes. There was no passing, dribbling being the game. Charging was very heavy and frequent. One player broke his collar-bone early in the game, but kept playing until the finish. The Wanderers won by 1-0.”

The handbook has some interesting photographs and I’ll post the centre spread on the next post.

Attachment: scan0006.jpg (782.93Kb)

The crowd is outstanding, and especially with the penalty after 44 minutes it was clear when we came out after half-time the welcome would be pretty loud and not too friendly. Crystal Palace wanted to strike back, so that was all clear. This is a wonderful place to play football - Jurgen Klopp

Fantastic Phil, thanks for that, now I have something else to covet!

Very interesting about the shirts being a reversal of the usual, I haven't heard that before.

My oldest thing is attached on this and the next post, it's not an official Palace item as auch but was made by a bitter (but artistic!) Newcastle fan after we beat them in the Cup in 1907.

Attachment: Newcastle v CPFC 1907 P1.jpg (242.52Kb)

Zaha, Williams, Murray, Ambrose, Scannell.

A 5-man forward line who scored 3 goals in 10 minutes on 27th September 2011 at .......................

Brilliant - I love all the old memorabilia!

Thanks PPM, that's an amazing piece! Can you say how you came by it?

Memorabilia from this era seems to be very rare and I would suspect because Palace were then in the Southern League rather than the Football League, they didn't produce stuff like programmes; at least I've never seen mention of one.

Memorabilia for the very first Crystal Palace (1861-76) seems completely non existent. I can't even find a trace of any records, other than they apparently wore blue and white, which were the interior colours of the Crystal Palace itself.

Edited by Phil O'Sophical (11 Mar 2013 9.17am)

The crowd is outstanding, and especially with the penalty after 44 minutes it was clear when we came out after half-time the welcome would be pretty loud and not too friendly. Crystal Palace wanted to strike back, so that was all clear. This is a wonderful place to play football - Jurgen Klopp

I love the picture of the guy doing the nazi salute to the gay man.