West Bromwich Albion was formed on September 3rd 1879, by a bunch of workers from the George Slater Spring Works. These lads obviously had a spring in their step, as they walked all the way to Wednesbury to buy a ball to play football with, and because of this, they were originally called West Bromwich Strollers. One year later the name changed to Albion. At the time Albion were playing at Dartmouth Park, moving in 1884 to Stoney Lane. In 1888 Albion was invited to become a founder member of the Football League. In these early days, Albion wore a variety of kits including, yellow and white quartered shirts, red hoops, and red and blue stripes. Embroidered into these early rainbow coloured kits was what would have been at the time one of the first club badges. The emblem was the Staffordshire Knot. (PIC 1)
The Stafford Knot, as it is also known, is not heraldic but an ancient symbol steeped in mystery and it has appeared in many local arms and crests. It is used in the pottery industry as a stamp, much like the ones you find under your cups and saucers. As for its origin, it can be dated as far back as AD 805 where the knot was added to the Anglo-Saxon stone cross, evidence of this can be found at St Peter’s in Stafford. Stories relating to the origin of the knot include, that in or around AD 913 a lady called Ethelfleda, who had built some kind of stronghold in Staffs, in a symbolic gesture took off her girdle and said to the local’s: “With this girdle, I bind us all together”, and so the three local area’s were bound together to form Staffordshire, and that was the start of the knot. I got that from Noel Slater on the internet. Thanks, Noel. An even better explanation is this macabre offering from Bagnall Village: “The knot was used in barbaric times by a county sheriff who invented it to hang three criminals at the same time”. West Bromwich lies in Staffordshire which is why they used the Staffordshire Knot. West Brom still use the knot on occasions, although not to hang criminals. The rest of my information is a little more reliable as it comes from the club secretary Dr J J Davies. Thank you very much, J J, for replying to my letter with so much detail. In 1900 West Bromwich moved to the Hawthorns ground from Stoney Lane. Incidentally, the ground is the highest in the UK at 551 feet above sea level. The Hawthorns took its name from the area in which it was built, this area being heavily dense with hawthorn bushes. The hawthorn bushes attracted lots of song thrushes called throstles, and that is the bird sitting on a hawthorn bush in a badge from the 1960s. (PIC 2) A big craze in the 1970s was to have the club’s initials embroidered onto the shirts in place of a badge and West Brom followed suit. (PIC 3) The 1980s saw a return of the 1960s throstle but with the club’s initials below. The 1990s saw the coat of arms used, something clubs usually start out with. (PIC 4)
On the shield of the arms are three millrinds. A millrind is an iron support, usually four-armed or cross-shaped for the upper stone, in a pair of millstones. They do not represent milling, but the iron foundries that made them. The bucks head is from the arms of the Earl of Dartmouth, as is the crest of a buck and ostrich feathers. The Earl’s arms are included as he was seated at Sandwell Hall. Sandwell Hall was a mansion house about one mile east of West Bromwich. The year 2000 saw the return of the throstle on a shield backed by the blue and white stripes of the club’s shirts. (PIC 5) The latest incarnation on this theme is a more modern looking shield, throstle and hawthorn bush. (PIC 6) The club’s name completes the design that was introduced in 2009. The throstle also represents one of the club’s oldest nicknames, “The Throstles”. It has been an emblem of the club for over a century and at one time a live throstle was kept there in a cage which was hung out over the players tunnel on match days. They still have a giant model that used to sit on the scoreboard but I believe it has been moved to the Woodman Corner of the ground. (PIC 7)
The nickname “Albion” is self-explanatory so we can move on to the most frequently used nickname of all “The Baggies”. J J tells me: “Its origins seem to be lost in the mists of time although it does not seem to have been used until the 20th Century”. Everybody outside of West Brom seems to think that it comes from the baggy shorts the players used to wear, but all players wore those at that time. J J continues: “In the early years of The Hawthorns, at half time the turnstile men would carry their bags of money to the club office. To get there they would walk inside the perimeter track, which stood between the pitch and the crowd. Here comes the bagmen, went up the cry. An alternative theory is that the term baggies began as a term of insult aimed at Albion fans by their Villa rivals. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of our supporters worked in heavy industry. They wore either moleskin trousers or a primitive type of denim trousers. Either type soon tended to sag rather badly. On Saturday match days, many supporters worked until midday or later, and then walked to the match. If the game was a local derby at Villa Park, the metalworkers of the Black Country crossed the boundary into foreign Birmingham territory in their working clothes to be greeted by the locals with contemptuous cries of, Here come the baggies. The name stuck and later transferred itself to the team rather than to the supporters”.
Thanks, J J, for your help and the wealth of information. As well as Villa, Birmingham and Wolverhampton Wanderers are counted among West Brom’s rivals. When the ground opened in 1900 the Hawthorns held 20,000, today it has a 27,000 capacity. In 1900 the area was covered in hawthorn bushes which were cleared to make way for the new ground hence its name, The Hawthorns. The name of the village that grew up to be West Bromwich is also related to bushes or brooms as they were called, it is not known what type so they could well have been hawthorn bushes as they were common to the area. Broom became Brom and Wich is an Anglo-Saxon term for a row of houses later becoming a trading place, so could mean a row of shops. So West Bromwich means to the west of the shops by the bushes. To find out more on West Bromwich Albion, hitch up your pants and go to www.wba.co.uk
