Wigan Athletic Founding Celebration at Queen's Hall
On Friday the 8th of may, the day before Wigan Athletic's official birthday, the Heritage Project, alongside help from Wigan Athletic Community Trust, organised a truly special and memorable birthday celebration at Queen's Hall, the birthplace of Wigan Athletic.
This fantastic event started some months ago after being brought up at one of the Heritage Project's bi-monthly meetings. Morgan from the Community Trust had signified the importance of the date and proposed a potential join event held by the Community Trust and the Heritage Project, which all our volunteers agreed would be a great idea, and so the planning started. Early on into our research and preparing we had already selected our desired venue, Queen's Hall Church, which is a beloved and historic building right in the heart of Wigan town centre, and also happens to be the birthplace of Wigan Athletic indicated by an English Heritage Blue Plaque. The Blue Plaque was awarded on 13th October 2022, 90 years after the founding of the club and was orginially proposed by valued, popular and influential supporter, Tony Topping, who is also a member of our Heritage Project. With the date, venue and occasion all chosen the next step was to contact Queen's Hall and provide our supporters with a great day out.
From the very start of organising the event until the finish and clean up on the day, Queen’s Hall, their staff and facilities were perfect. They were very enthusiastic about us holding the event knowing the importance of the link between the football club and the Church and went above and beyond to hold it as close to the anniversary as possible, Friday the 8th May. Queen's Hall also suggested catering of the event, which they could do themselves inside their volunteer run cafe, which usually opens throughout the day to feed their church members, visitors and the wider public, whilst also supporting events, staff and the homeless. With help from the Community Trust, interest and numbers were collected from numerous social groups and sessions that work closely with the Heritage Project and initial numbers sounded very promising and gave us confidence the celebration would be a success, so catering was booked for 30 visitors.
The day included decorating and displaying many important and special objects, pictures and memories of Wigan Athletic throughout its history around the Hall, in which members, friends and even strangers of the Heritage Project could attend, celebrate and reminisce. The Hall brought and displayed their own heritage items, some of which the Heritage Project didn’t have so we were very impressed, and they where very thoughtful and open to us decorating their very impressive Church Hall with the item, objects and displays we brought with us. The cafe also provided a fantastic buffet, which had to be extended above the 30 we had estimated, of sandwiches, soup, pasties and other hot foods, topped off with impressive desserts all of which our volunteers and attendees very much enjoyed. The Hall looked amazing with Wigan Athletic items, shirts and flags painting the Hall in various shades of blue and white and complimented the pictures being shown on the Hall's projectors, which were the perfect backdrop for our volunteer talks about their experience supporting Wigan Athletic and important games throughtout the club's history, including a deep dive on the 1953/54 season and our FA Cup tie against Newcastle United.
The introduction of these talks fell onto our Chairman, Jordan Burns, who talked about the event, the importance of the day and what the Heritage Project hopes to achieve in the coming season, he then introduced our first speaker, Tony Topping. Tony spoke elegantly and emotionally about his experience supporting Wigan Athletic, his time as a kid and not being too interested in football to being brought to Spingfield Park and falling in love from the first minute, a story many of our fans can understand. He continued his speech by sharing more about his memories whilst growing up and into adulthood, the games, the players and his travels, he spoke about bringing his family to games and getting them involved with the crazy world of being a Latics fan. He finalised his words by speaking about how he nominated the Hall for their blue plaque and what it meant as a supporter to play a key role in bringing this to Wigan, all to be ended with a poignant poem written by Tony himself.
Next came Colin Walls, our secretary, with his deep dive into 1954 and the lead up to one of Wigan's biggest ever games, Newcastle United in the FA Cup. He spoke about the team that season and their form in the league and cup leading up to our famous Third Round tie, which would see non-league Wigan face-off against Division 1 and recent back-to-back FA Cup winners Newcastle United at St James' Park. The game started off lively before Newcastle struck first, scoring a goal many expected to be only the start of the day, but Wigan held until half-time. When the second half started, Wigan came out in force quickly pressuring the Newcastle side and equalising through record goalscorer Harry Lyon, only to go onto to shock all 52,222 supporters by scoring a second and taking the lead with 15 minutes to play. Unfortunately, Wigan lost their concentration and conceded only a minute later from Jackie Milburn, but they had plenty of chances to go on and win the tie and produce one the greatest upsets in FA Cup history but couldn't get the ball across the line, the game finished 2-2 with a replay need back at Springfield Park. This game continued the fight between the two sides, firstly off the pitch when Newcastle refused to use the facilities at Springfield Park therefore using the changing rooms at Wigan Swimming Baths instead but secondly on the pitch as neither club wanted to be either embarrased or miss the opportunity. The victory though would ultimately go with Newcastle who showed just a little too much quality for Wigan to overcome in the replay with the final score being 3-2, showing the non-league Wigan never gave up to the end.
After these talks, the event would slowly start to tail off with many visitors and attendees leaving the Hall, grabbing the last remnants of food before its closing. The Heritage Project would like to emphasise that this event was made possible and improved thanks to the Community Trust, our volunteers and the staff and facilities at Queen’s Hall, which will always have a special place in Wigan Athletics’ history and Wigan Athletic Community Trust and the Heritage Project will happily continue to work with them to hold further events at their historic and important site.
Some pictures of the event can be found below:
