But why was the Crystal Palace Club fielding a football team at all, and why were they in Leytonstone, miles from their home in Sydenham? To answer these questions, we must go back a few years.
The original Crystal Palace was built to house The Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. When it closed it had to be decided what was to be done with the magnificent glass building, then the largest building in the world.
The Exhibition had been a roaring success, attracting over six million visitors. In particular, it was a great money spinner for the railways, who had brought millions of visitors to London, and they weren’t prepared to lose that income without a fight.
To save the building from demolition it was eventually bought by the London Brighton Railway and moved to Penge Place, in Sydenham, the home of the railway company’s chairman, Leo Schuster. It was rebuilt in Sydenham, even bigger than before, and with it came 200 acres of parkland.
The Crystal Palace reopened in 1854 and after completing the interior works turned its attention to the park. In April 1857 the Crystal Palace Company opened a brand new cricket ground in its park and in May, it was announced that ‘a club is in the course of formation to be called “The Crystal Palace Club”’. We find them playing their first cricket match at the Palace on 13th July 1857 against Eleven Gentlemen of Guys [Hospital].
In the 19th century, cricket was by far the most popular and competitive team game, and serious cricketers would organise football matches among themselves in the winter to keep fit as, outside of the schools and universities, there were no organised teams in or near London to play.
Internal games were the norm for clubs, and would be between sides such as Married v Unmarried, A-L (of the alphabet) v The Rest and even, Ugly v Handsome!
The Crystal Palace Club cricketers were obviously serious sportsmen as, according to Charles Alcock’s 19th century Football Annual, at some time during 1861, they formed their own winter football team – and it was this team that went to Leytonstone to play The Forest Club in March 1862. But why were they playing Forest in Essex?
It is almost certain that the link between the two clubs was a family of five young brothers named Cutbill. Their father, Thomas Cutbill, was a civil engineer and the London agent for Brassey & Wythes, one of the principal builders of Britain’s railways; and the owner, Thomas Brassey, was one of the first directors of the Crystal Palace Company.
The 1861 census shows the Cutbill family living at Southwood Lodge, Lawrie Park in the parish of Beckenham, very close to the Crystal Palace.
Before they moved to Sydenham, the Cutbills had lived in Essex and some of them had been to the local Forest School as had many of the Forest team.
Football history shows that the Forest team had been formed in 1859 and was the oldest organised football team in the London area. Below is a photograph of them in 1863, the oldest known photograph of an Association Football team.
