Football’s founding father

Feb 2 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

Nobody living has ever seen his face, but the ‘lost’ grave of the man who created Everton and Liverpool football clubs is to be restored. David Charters reports

DEEP in the ground of an overgrown and almost forgotten grave lies a preacher, whose love of cricket links him through the ages to the chap in a white coat squirting blood-bank dollops of ketchup on fried onions and hot-dogs – while feet thunder past his cart to the great football stadiums.

Now that grave is to be restored, so that the Revered Ben Swift Chambers will be remembered by the coming generations as the man, whose enthusiasm for God and sport created both Everton and Liverpool, even though his favoured game was cricket.

Peter Lupson, a football historian, traced Chambers’s final resting place to Shepley, a Pennine village some five miles from Holmfirth, setting for the seemingly eternal TV comedy, Last of the Summer Wine.

Chambers was born in 1845 in a weaver’s cottage in Stocksmoor, near Huddersfield. His father worked as a clothier until Ben was five, when the family moved to Shepley, where both parents taught in the village school.

From those early days, Ben was convinced of his calling and began his association with the New Connexion branch of the Methodist Church, teaching with such enthusiasm at the Sunday school that worshippers knew he was destined for the pulpit. However, before that he was an apprentice to a high-class Huddersfield engraver, working with such diligence that he was offered a partnership.

But the call of the Lord was stronger.

At 24, Chambers had completed his theological training and started his work as a minister – first at Ashton, moving to Stockport after a year. It was there that he married Elizabeth Holden, a farmer’s daughter from Shepley. Ministries in Barrow and Gateshead followed. In 1877, he was appointed superintendent and minister of St Domingo Chapel, in the Everton district of Liverpool. He would stay there for nine years.

Within a month, this advocate of “muscular Christianity” had persuaded members of the Bible class to start St Domingo’s Cricket Club, with Chambers himself joining in, though nothing is known of his prowess with bat or ball.

Cricket was then widely regarded as the national game. But spirits sank during the long, dark months of winter, so after that first cricket season was completed the young men decided to form the St Domingo Football Club.

They played on Stanley Park, quickly attracting players from other local churches. They changed their name to Everton FC and in 1884 they opened a new stadium at Anfield, turning professional the following season and winning the Football League Championship in 1891.

Success, however, led to financial tensions.

John Houlding, a brewer and the club’s landlord and president, wanted to increase the annual ground rent from £100 to £250. Most of the committee, led by George Mahon, St Domingo’s organist, rebelled and as a result were expelled from Anfield.

This contingent then won a legal battle for the right to keep the Everton name, moving to Walton, where they built Goodison Park. Those who stayed behind became Liverpool.

Chambers, father of the two clubs, had returned to Yorkshire. He died in Leeds in 1901 and was buried in Shepley. And this is where we find Peter Lupson, head of English at Kingsmead School, Hoylake, Wirral, who has continued researching the Christian influence on the game since the 2006 publication of his book, Thank God for Football!

“I have tried to keep the book updated,” says Peter, “by tracking the history of each person I have been writing about from the cradle to grave.

“I have taken photographs of the houses they lived in and so on, so I have a very good feel for the person and his life. I eventually managed to track Ben Chambers down via the Oxford Brookes University’s Wesley Centre. But I was quite alarmed when I discovered that half the Methodist Connexion cemetery in Shepley had been built on.”

Through Diane Hicks, the local minister, he found an elderly lady, who had the only plan of the graveyard.

Chambers’s grave was there, but undergrowth and overgrowth made the area impenetrable.

The church carried out some clearance work and Peter was able to see his man’s grave. The inscription says, “In loving memory of the Rev Ben Swift Chambers born August 30, 1845, died November 24, 1901”.

Bill Kenwright, Everton chairman, and Rick Parry, Liverpool’s chief executive, are both supporting the grave’s restoration during Liverpool’s year as the European Capital of Culture.

“I feel the grave should retain the simplicity that it already has because clearly he was a humble man,” says Peter.

“I would like to see it left as it is with the stonework cleaned up and the engraved words to be cleaned and the immediate surround given some dignity.

“No biography of him has ever been written, nor has any photograph of him ever been discovered,” he adds. “At long last, thanks to Everton and Liverpool, he will receive a lasting tribute to his memory.”

Perhaps occasionally now, the marching fans will think of an old preacher when they smell the hot-dogs and onions on their way to the grounds.

davidcharters