An albumen print photograph survives in the college archives that transports us vividly back to the earliest days of Bradfield College. Dated 1872, not long after the first set of association football rules were adopted at the school, it shows 12 young athletic men, the first football team, posing in an informal manner. They dress with variety, some with striped long-sleeved shirts, some with bare heads, and others with ornate tasselled caps or decorated crown-like headbands.
Just as now, football was played on the pitch immediately adjoining the Pang. Wattle hurdles were placed along the length of the pitch to keep the ball in play. Goal posts were used without nets and the rough and tumble game allowed handling of the ball as well as dribbling.
In the centre is a fair-haired young man who was to become Bradfield’s greatest football legend. This is Charles Denton, at school from 1862 to 1872 and captain of the first team in his final year. He went on to Trinity College, Oxford and throughout his time there and afterwards continued to play football at a high level for three of the most renowned and influential early English football clubs – Oxford University, the Swifts and the Wanderers – as well as turning out unfailingly for Old Bradfieldian matches. In the 1876-77 season Denton played for the Wanderers when they won the FA Cup against Oxford University 2-1 and again the following year when they beat the Royal Engineers 3-1. By the time that he played his last match for the Wanderers in 1880, Denton had made 41 appearances and scored 12 goals. At the moment this photograph was taken, however, when he was a slight and unassuming young schoolboy, he can only have dreamt that such an illustrious sporting future awaited him.
Below are some of the earliest photos we have in the archive, showing the first football pitch before it was levelled. The group photos of staff and prefects are taken from the album of EC Dermer, member of the SCR from 1868-72. His album is one of the most important and fascinating records we have of this period in Bradfield's history.
