Football artifacts never seen before in public, will go on display at Sheffield’s Town Hall next month, at a free exhibition organised by the charity, Sheffield Home of Football. The exhibition entitled, “Sheffield the Open-Air Museum of Football,” will be opened for preview in the Silver Room on the ground floor of the town hall on Saturday 2nd August.
Among the items are some unique 19th century original hand coloured press drawings of some of the very early games, including the famous Blackburn Olympic v Eton FA Cup victory in which Sheffield’s Jack Hunter brought the FA Cup home, thus breaking the elite’s grip on the game’, says John Clarke, trustee of the charity and exhibition organiser. ‘We also have lithograph of the programme for the Sheffield United v Tottenham Hotspur FA Cup Final, which was the first time rail excursions were used to any great extent with a crowd of over 100,000’.
You can see programmes from the first matches in America by The Pilgrims FC, led by Sheffield along with silver coins produced to commemorate the first ever floodlit football match at Bramall Lane in 1878’ and many more items of historical interest. This exhibition showcases the unique links between Sheffield’s social and economic history and the connections to our world-famous football history. A new map will guide visitors to those places of historical importance in the city with each artifact on display connecting to a physical location across the city, many marked with blue plaques.
You’ll be able to walk to these sites and see how the rules of the modern game echo through history. Creating an index of artifacts in one place which turns the city into an ‘open air museum,’ has never been done before and we are grateful for the assistance of Sheffield City Council and Town Hall Manager, Steven Burke in particular.
The exhibition will run for two months until Saturday 4th October during town hall opening times which are 09.00am until 5.00pm Monday-Friday and 10.00am-4.00pm on Saturdays.
