'From Cloisters to Cup Finals'

From Cloisters to Cup Finals, Malcolm Bailey’s History of Charterhouse Football, is one of the most important books on football history to be published in recent years.

Incredibly well-researched in terms of both stories and pictures, this 250-page ‘labour of love’ covers the first days of the mob game, the build-up of Charterhouse football as the famous public school moved from the Cloisters of London* to the estates of Godalming in Surrey, the growth of ‘Old Boys’ football and the eventual parting of the ways between the professionals and the amateurs.

Charterhouse had printed rules for football before The Football Association was even founded. Two representatives from the school, the Honorary Secretary of football and the 18-year-old school captain, attended the meeting at which The FA came into being in 1863, and 18 years later the ‘Old Carthusians’, the team of former Charterhouse pupils, won The FA Cup!

It was the last FA Cup Final to feature two amateur teams. Only two clubs in history have won both The FA Amateur Cup and The FA Cup – Old Carthusians and Wimbledon.

From Cloisters to Cup Finals has fascinating little biographies, and even rare pictures, of some of the great players from the 19th century. James Prinsep, for example, was at Charterhouse from 1874 to 1878 and spent more than a hundred years in football’s record books as the youngest ever FA Cup Final player and the youngest ever England player. His records were broken only relatively recently, by Curtis Weston of Millwall and a certain Wayne Rooney respectively.

Poor Prinsep was only 34 when he died. He caught pneumonia playing golf and it led to blood poisoning and kidney failure.

Author Malcolm Bailey, a Charterhouse schoolmaster since 1974, was a decent footballer himself. He was a Cambridge blue, played for several FA XIs and at club level represented senior non-League sides Lewes, Horsham and Sutton United.

*The ‘Cloister’ game was effectively ‘indoor football’ played in a brick-covered passage. The northern and southern doors were at right-angles to the passage and served as goals.

From Cloisters to Cup Finals can be purchased from the Charterhouse Bookshop priced £25 plus £6 p&p. Please call 01483 291 635 or e-mail mjb@charterhouse.org.uk. It will be on public sale soon.