Rev. William Pitt

Encyclopedia : R : RE : REV : Rev. William Pitt

Reverend William Pitt was the Rector of Liddington and is widely regarded as the founder of Swindon Town Football Club.

For decades it was widely considered that the Wiltshire club was formed in 1881. "However, A match report from the Swindon Advertiser, dated 13th December 1879, showed Reverend William Pitt - captain of the Spartans - playing for a "Swindon Association Football Club" in a 4-0 defeat against Rover FC. Also, Reverend Pitt was appointed Rector of Liddington in 1881 - making it extremely unlikely that, with no means of transportation, he would have lived in Liddington and formed a football club in Swindon. For a while, the club seemed to accept the new date - with former club statistician Paul Plowman, the man who carried out the research, working as the club's retail manager, the Town's kits in 1995 carried an "Est. 1879" tag. Since then though, the club's official stance seems to have reverted to the 1881 date.

- Despite this, another more recent discovery almost certainly confirms the 1879 date. Again, the findings came through Paul Plowman's research - and were unexpectedly found in details of an after dinner speech at the Southern League championship celebrations in 1911. One of the guest speakers that evening was a certain Reverend Pitt - and he spent the evening reminiscing of how he "formed the present club back in 1879"."

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.