Heaton, of course, has a long and rich football history.

East End, the club, which went on to incorporate West End and form Newcastle United in 1892, played on Chillingham Road from 1884.

Perhaps its greatest player, captain and later director, Alec White (1860-1940, lived in Heaton, including 27 Cardigan Terrace and 48 Mowbray Street – he once scored seven or maybe nine goals (reports vary – there was no ‘dubious goals panel’ then) in a 19-0 victory. Local football historian, John Allan, recently found a rare photograph of him, which was published in a Newcastle United programme.

The Magpies’ most successful captain, the charismatic polymath, Colin Veitch (1881-1938), was also , of course, born locally and lived at 1 Stratford Villas:

One of Sunderland’s best loved players and winner of four championship medals (including three Scottish titles with Glasgow Rangers), Billy Hogg (1879-1937), grew up on Spencer Street; not even Colin Veitch could match that!

And there are footballers, fondly remembered by supporters of other more distant clubs, who were buried in Heaton Cemetery, including John ‘Jock’ Smith (1865-1911), who played for Liverpool in their inaugural season in the Football League (1892-3), who tragically committed suicide aged 45, while living in Byker – he is buried in an unmarked grave.

Also buried in an unmarked grave is Bob Roberts (1863-1929) who won the cup with West Brom in 1888 and played not only in West Bromwich Albion’s first Football League game in 1888 but also the first ever recorded game of West Bromwich Strollers ten years earlier. (They changed their name to Albion in 1880.) Bob started as an outfield player for Strollers but was a distinguished goalkeeper for the Baggies. He also played for Sunderland Albion and, like Jock Smith, lived in Byker on his retirement.

And, of course, there’s Heaton Stannington and other local teams, still making history.

Christine Liddell sent us the photograph above, which she believes to be of Heaton Stan post WW1. She says her father, Tom Liddell (front row, far right) played in goal. Can anybody tell us any more about the photo?

And this photograph shows Alan Sidney-Wilmot in goal for the Stan v Crook in 1951. Alan still lives in High Heaton. (Thank you to Heaton Stan historian, Kevin Mochrie, for the photo).

And it’s fantastic to unearth new football teams and stories and so thank you to Heaton History Group member, Ian Clough, for unearthing medals belonging to yet another goalkeeper Henner Hudspeth , more famous locally as a dance band leader. Henner’s son, Michael, remembers his father pointing at what we now call Grounsell Park and telling him that he used to play football there. However, no record of him playing for Heaton Stannington has been found.  Recently rediscovered medals shows that he, in fact, played for another Heaton team, North Heaton in 1924-5.

Perhaps they also played at the old High Heaton quarry ground.

And, although it’s just outside our patch, we couldn’t resist publishing this photograph of the Maling Pottery football team, taken in the 1911-12 season, shown to us by Heaton History Group member, Paul Riding. His grandfather, Jimmy Gardner, was captain. We’re pretty sure that some of their players will have come from Heaton. Can you help us identify any? And how many will have fought – and died – in World War 1?

Can you help?

Ruth Baldasera, who works for Siemens, would like to make contact people who played for any Parsons football team. If you can help, please get in touch with Chris at Heaton History Group. See below.

And we’d love to find out more about the football history of Heaton. If you can help us identify players with a Heaton connection, tell us more about the history or share photographs of local teams or  if you recognise anyone in or can add to what we know of the above photos, please get in touch either by clicking on the link immediately below the title of this article or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

We are always interested to receive information, memories and photos relevant to the history of Heaton.

Acknowledgements

Written by Chris Jackson, with lots of help as mentioned in the text.