Football Clubs Put Heritage on Their Shirts
Stoke City and Port Vale's new club kits are inspired by Stoke-on-Trent heritage, it's good to see.
As we gear up for the beginning of a new domestic football season, it’s indisputable that football is both big business and an iconic global brand. But the beautiful game is also entwined in the fabric of families and communities. There is something uniquely powerful about football and the connection it creates with people and places.
This article by Paul Williams was originally shared in the Personally Speaking section of The Sentinel newspaper.
Football can trace its roots back to the second half of the 19th Century where it originated in the factories and mills of England’s north and midlands. Following the Industrial Revolution, England’s manufacturing heartland came to be recognised as its footballing homeland.
Emerging from their formative years with names shared with cities, towns, or other locales, many football clubs came to fulfil ‘a representative role for large numbers of citizens from urban neighbourhoods.’
In the Potteries, the record books state that Stoke Ramblers were formed in 1863 by former pupils of the Charterhouse School whilst they were apprentices at the North Staffordshire Railway. Merging with Stoke Victoria Cricket Club in 1878, they moved to the Athletic Club ground which became known as the Victoria Ground and remained the team’s home for the next 119 years before they relocated to what is now the bet365 stadium.
One of the 12 founding members of the English Football League in 1888, they changed their name to Stoke City in 1925 when Stoke-on-Trent was granted city status.
Taking their name from an inaugural meeting at Port Vale House in 1876, Port Vale moved to Burslem in 1884 where they were known as ‘Burslem Port Vale’ before dropping the prefix following the acquisition of a new ground. In 1950 the club moved again to its present ‘Wembley of the North’ home at Vale Park.
With both Stoke City and Port Vale flourishing, Arnold Bennett, the city’s famous literary son, wrote in 1911 that the Potteries was now recognised as ‘one of the first centres of football and in the history of the association game the name of Stoke-on-Trent is glorious.’
Football clubs have been defined as institutions of ‘industrial social heritage’ that frequently promote the development of ‘topophilic place identities.’ This was clearly expressed in Steve Leach’s excellent Twenty Football Towns book which highlighted how the ‘significance of football clubs as expressions of the strength of community identity within a town can be much more than a symbolic feature.’
A new report published by British Future explores how football is not only ‘one of the rare cultural institutions able to reach all parts of our society, but clubs ‘occupy an important role in the social infrastructure of our towns and cities.’ This enables them to bridge divides and foster a shared sense of social connection and pride in local heritage.
Which brings me back to Stoke City and Port Vale and recent kit launches. Ahead of the 2022/23 season, Port Vale announced it was ‘time to break the mould’ as they launched their new away kit at Middleport Pottery.
The compelling narration style used in the launch video filmed in the UK’s only continuously working Victorian pottery factory revealed the kit was: “Inspired by a Vale classic, fragments of our heritage are with us wherever we go. From backstamps to badges, in a country full of Towns, Cities and United’s, there’s only one Port Vale.”
The forthcoming season’s kit launch video filmed in and around Vale Park was backgrounded by the anthemic The Wonder of You as it told how, ‘In a world of change, the one constant is you.’
Stoke City’s latest ‘Our heritage is our identity’ kit launch was partly filmed in Gladstone Pottery Museum, an attraction whose cobbled yard and huge bottle kilns create an atmospheric time warp that has no equal.
To promote the kit, which was created with the city at its heart, the video storyline explains with a help from some well-known local faces how: “Industry changes, but DNA stays. Pit lamps and kilns, early mornings, long days. For hard working folk, there’s nowhere like Stoke.”
Over 150 years since they were first formed, it’s wonderful to see the Potteries’ two football clubs continue to celebrate our city’s rich industrial heritage and help to build a compelling place narrative about local identity and civic pride.
Paul Williams
Culture, Tourism, Heritage, Board Member at Stoke Creates
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