Page 10 - Bristol Telephones FC v Radstock Town 021021

Visitors Radstock Town F.C.

Formation:

Programme notes from a game in 1937 suggest that football was
being played in Radstock as early as 1835 but there is no solid
evidence to back that up. However, there are newspaper match
reports from 1883 so, it can be safely as sumed that the club was
actually formed in the early 1880’s. Radstock Wanderers was the
clubs name from 1889 until they changed to Radstock Town after
affiliating to the Somerset FA in 1895.
Ground:

In the early days the club played on a ground off of the Old Bath
Road situated where a Primary School stood until recently. It was
officially called Roundhill but was known locally as ‘Hilltop’. In the late
1800’s and early 1900’s they also played at South Hill, which is where
a Bath College campus is now but at the time was a manor house and
grounds owned by Earl Waldergrave.
The lack of a true home became critical at the end of the First World
War and the club was unable to re form until 1920 when they were
able to move to their current home at Southfield. The first official
fixture played at Southfield was on Septem ber 10th 1920 when
Warminster Town were the visitors in an FA Cup tie. The game, which
Radstock won 1-0, was watched by a crowd of 700, which apparently
greatly pleased the club committee!

As a business:
Financial issues saw the club take a couple of breaks from
competitive first team football, 1900-01 to 1902-03 and again at the
end of the 1909-10 campaign.