Search Your Attics and Box Rooms: City’s Oldest Programmes Sought by CCFPA

Have you kept any pre 1945 Coventry City programmes? If you have and it fills a gap in our growing collection we would like to take an image via scan or photocopy.  Do you have any that look like the images below?

Association Chairman Jim Brown and Secretary Mike Young are building up a digital archive of Coventry City’s oldest programmes. The aim is to make for the first time as complete as possible permanent record of the Club’s pre 1945 programmes in digital images to eventually provide a publicly available resource about the players events and stats of the early years of the club for the education and entertainment of players, fans and researchers alike. We are collecting both home and away programmes (including reserve issues).

We are approaching 650 different image sets from the early years of the 20th century to the end of the Second World War. We have already been greatly assisted in our project by quite a number of Sky Blues fans and collectors. The latest is Coventrian Cliff Jones who has been clearing out boxes in his attic prior to a house move and rediscovered a treasure trove of veteran issues – the front of four of them are reproduced above – all away games, all very different!  Three are from Season 1937-38 Division Two games at Chesterfield, Southampton and Sheffield United. The fourth is a Wartime game in the Football League North at Filbert Street. Leicester in 1942-43. Thanks to Cliff!

To jog your memories we reproduce immediately below covers from the first six seasons of the ‘Bantams’ entry into the Football League (1919-25) and above another set for 1929-1933

There are still lots of gaps which you may be able to help fill so if you have any prewar programme – home or away – of City games, the earlier the better, we would be grateful if you could let Mike Young (for his contact numbers/ email see contacts page) know by phone or email, what you have got so he can check whether it fills a hole in our database. If it is then he will make arrangements with you to get it scanned or photocopied as appropriate.

Though we have asked before we still hope that some of our FPA members and associate members will be able to protect a bit more of the club’s important heritage for posterity and in doing so help make the Club’s (and your) history come alive again!