The birth of football in Edinburgh: from the world’s first football club to the founding of Hearts and Hibs.
If you think football in Edinburgh started with Hearts and Hibs, think again. Football has been played in Edinburgh since medieval times, but things really started to happen when the city became home to the world’s first football club in 1824. Andy Mitchell will tell the story of the Foot-Ball Club and its members and reveal how the kicking game had to struggle for survival in the face of rugby dominance in the mid-century before events turned full circle. The story ends with a new beginning, the belated arrival of association football and the formation of the two great rivals in the 1870s.
Andy Mitchell is a Scottish sports historian who runs a dedicated sports history website and has written several books including a Who’s Who of Scotland footballers and the story of the first international match. He was brought up in Edinburgh and when he went to his first football match in 1970 – an Edinburgh derby, no less – he was immediately hooked on the game despite attending a rugby-playing school. He was fortunate enough to have spent most of his career in the media working in football, as Head of Communications at the Scottish Football Association and as a freelance media officer for UEFA. Now retired, he lives in Portobello and is researching sports history as vigorously as ever.
Edinburgh is 900 Years Old!
In 1124 King David I introduced a new system of local government into Scotland by creating royal burghs as part of his efforts to reform the nation’s economic and political structures.
Edinburgh was one of his first royal burghs, along with Berwick, Dunfermline, Roxburgh and Stirling.
While there is no surviving founding Edinburgh charter, an 1127 Dunfermline Abbey royal charter refers to ‘my burgh of Edinburgh’. In 1128, Canongate Burgh was created for Holyrood Abbey.
After the Reformation, Edinburgh spent considerable effort acquiring the former abbey’s lands over the following 200 years. It acquired Canongate then created a new burgh for South Leith in 1636. The burghs of Broughton, Calton and Portsburgh were also acquired and run by Edinburgh. This complex system of governance was abolished in 1856 when all burghs under the management of Edinburgh were merged into a single burgh.
In 1833, Portobello and Leith were made independent parliamentary burghs under the Burgh Reform Act. They ran their own affairs until amalgamated into an expanded Edinburgh in 1896 and 1920, respectively. 1975 saw the last expansion of the city’s boundaries, including Queensferry, which had been made a royal burgh in 1636.
Edinburgh has selected 2024 to mark the start of the 900th anniversary of our city, and to tell the story of Edinburgh’s journey through the centuries from the 12th century City of David right up to the 21st century, the City of Diversity. Our talks at the City Art Centre will celebrate the 10 themes and will span a period of summer 2024 until August 2025.
The birth of football in Edinburgh