Bootle’s Coming Home

This project is now completed, leaflets are available at Bootle F.C. Stadium, or contact us for more details.

The project will bring together a local sports historian, young people and local residents to share and celebrate our footballing legacy. After this consultation process we will undertake reminiscence work with the local population, recording their oral histories and memories of our football pitch and Bootle FC. These interviews and testimonies will then be the inspiration for short films made with our youth group under the guidance of professional documentary drama experts. These films will then be embedded through augmented reality technologies and QR codes into a specifically designed and printed souvenir album which will then be distributed via the Bootle Champion, which reaches up to 23,000 homes in Bootle on Merseyside. The album will contain pictures of local people interviewed as well as sites of historical significance in Bootle, these pictures will work as triggers for the documentary videos the young people at our club have created, revealing an interactive archive of the cultural history of football in Bootle to potentially the entire population of our town.

Club history

The original Bootle F.C. were formed in 1879 and played at Hawthorne Road. They enjoyed plenty of early success, winning the Liverpool Senior Cup in 1883, 1888 and 1889 before becoming founder members of the Football Alliance for the 1889/90 season, which was their most successful as they finished league runners-up, reached the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, where they lost to Blackburn Rovers (0–7). When the Alliance merged with the Football League in 1892, Bootle became founder members of the new Second Division. However, despite a respectable 8th place final position, the club dropped out after one season (and were replaced by neighbours Liverpool) and seemingly disappeared due to financial problems.

Football returned to Hawthorne Road when a new club, Bootle Athletic. was later formed with the new team initially playing in the Liverpool Leagues. In 1948 when they were elected to the Lancashire Combination 2, which they won at the first attempt. However, they struggled in the top-flight and after several tough seasons withdrew and folded during the 1953–54 campaign.

Press Feature

21/8/2017 Bootle Champion

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