The Foundation of Chelsea Football Club

In 1873, Henry Augustus Mears was born the son of Joseph and Charlotte Mears. Gus Mears was a London businessman. He had an interest in the game of football, a game that was thriving in the north of England but struggling in the south. Mears was worried that in 1900, no football club had represented London in the First Division of the Football League. In 1904 he had a brain wave.

  Mears pictured the London Athletics Club at Stamford Bridge as a gold mine. He looked at it and saw the massive potential the ground had. Mears had dreams of Stamford Bridge being the finest sporting venue in Britain with views of it someday hosting high profile matches such as the FA Cup Final. In 1904 the deeds to Stamford Bridge entered into the hands of Gus Mears and his brother Joseph, along with the adjacent market green, giving the pair a 12.5 acre site to create a football ground.

  After these developments, Mears hoped to establish his own football team. But these plans were halted due to unforeseen circumstances and big offers coming in for the central London site at Stamford Bridge. The Mears brothers seriously considered selling the site to the Great Western Railway Company who wanted to use it as a coal yard. Gus Mears was on the verge of abandoning his great sporting dream.

  On a Sunday morning in 1905, Gus Mears and his friend and colleague Frederick Parker, who was a strong advocate of Mears’ initial idea of developing a football stadium, took a stroll through the streets of Fulham, along with Mears’ dog. As the two walked on and discussed the idea, unexpectedly, Mears’ dog bit Fred Parker drawing blood from the wound and presumably causing pain. But Parker’s reaction was a chuckle. Mears’ was surprised by his friend’s reaction and as Chelsea folklore goes, changed his mind about selling Stamford Bridge. Gus Mears’ decided to go ahead with his original plans, creating the greatest football ground in Britain.

  However Chelsea Football Club was not in the original plans. Mears needed a team to fill his stadium. He failed to persuade the Fulham Football Club chairman, Henry Norris, to re-locate from Craven Cottage to Stamford Bridge. Fulham were in the middle of some financial difficulties and Craven Cottage had also just undergone a redevelopment with a new stand being built, designed by renowned football ground architect Archibald Leitch. Gus Mears decided to go an unorthodox way. He was now going to create a football team for a stadium, instead of the other way around.

  On the 10^th March 1905, a meeting took place in the Rising Sun pub, which is now called the Butcher’s Hook, opposite the present-day main entrance to Stamford Bridge on the Fulham Road. A new football club was founded. The members of the meeting decided to call the club Chelsea Football Club, ahead of Stamford Bridge FC, Kensington FC and London FC.

  It was now time for construction to begin on the new Stamford Bridge stadium. Archibald Leitch, the same man who oversaw the redevelopment of Craven Cottage and also designed Celtic Park, Ibrox and Hampden Park in Scotland. When first built, Stamford Bridge had an official capacity of 100,000, making it the second largest ground in England after Crystal Palace, which was the FA Cup Final venue at the time. As originally constructed, Stamford Bridge was an athletics track and the pitch was initially located in the middle of the running track. This meant that spectators were separated from the field of play on all sides by the width of running track and, on the north and south side’s, the separation was particularly large because the long sides of the running track considerably exceeded the length of the football pitch. The stadium had a single stand for 5,000 spectators on the east side. Designed by Archibald Leitch, it was an exact replica of the Johnny Haynes stand he had previously built at the re-developed Craven Cottage. The other sides were all open in a vast bowl and thousands of tons of material excavated from the building of the Piccadilly Line provided high terracing for standing spectators exposed to the elements on the west side.

  The Chelsea Football Club board now had to find a league to compete in. Chelsea initially considering joining the Southern League, but were rejected following objections from Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur, so they instead applied for admission to the Football League. Their candidacy was endorsed at the Football League AGM on 29^th May 1905. A speech by Fred Parker was particularly important, emphasising the new club's financial stability, its impressive new stadium and marquee players such as William ‘Fatty’ Foulke, the 22 stone, six-foot-four goal-keeper who had won a league title and two FA Cups with Sheffield United. Chelsea Football Club had been elected to the Second Division of the Football League and become the first team to be elected without having kicked a ball.