Curators Oct 2024 Column

I think it perhaps shows that the Museum Trust is fulfilling one of the objectives for which it was given charitable status, namely spreading awareness of the proud heritage of the Swindon Town Football Club in that the Club now carries a piece on the club history in every programme while the Swindon Advertiser has asked me to do a monthly article on it. I have been heavily involved with these and must admit my monthly column has taken something of a back seat over recent days. I hope to put this right in this column and to keep you updated on some of the new items that have been added to the collection and let you know of some other projects the Museum Trustees have been engaged with and some of the items that have been donated. Among the items handed over by the Club on permanent loan to the Museum are two scrapbooks which belonged to Roy Onslow which I believe were passed to the Club when Les Onslow, who like Roy, was a Swindon Town player died.

Besides cuttings from newspapers like the Football Pink it includes personal items such as invitations to play in representative games and telegrams sent to him. Two of these related to the day he made his debut for Swindon at Ipswich deputising for Maurice Owen. Roy was doing national service at the time and ended up £4 out of pocket as the travelling expenses he was given did not cover the train fare. How times change! An item presented by Wembley hero Roger Smart is a picture of him shaking hands with Princess Margaret before the Wembley match in 1969. This along with other pictures, badges and match reports is now on display in the John Trollope Suite. It was a moving occasion when, on the very first Ground tour after it had been set up Stan’s daughter and granddaughter were anonymously the visitors who saw the display.

We have been lucky in that many generous fans have donated shirts to the club from various dates in the clubs history. Many of these have been used to help in the redecoration of the Legends Lounge. While on the subject of shirts I must mention two particular ones. Cliff Jones was kind enough to let us have a shirt signed by the team that played in the Premiership. I have little doubt that at a Sports Memorabilia auction house it would fetch at least a couple of hundred pounds if not more but it is just one example of how Swindon fans wish to see items made visible to the future fans rather than make any monetary gain. In this respect I must hark back to David Coe who I think was the first shirt donator. This particular shirt was signed by Chris Kamara and was auctioned off to raise funds for the local Downs Syndrome Group. No sooner had he paid five hundred pounds for it than he handed it over to me for the Museum collection. It would be wrong not to finish without mentioning the attitude of the Club itself which has been fully supportive of our endeavours. All of the items in the Club’s trophy cabinet are now on permanent loan to the Museum enabling us to move and display them as and when we wish. The Club is also working with the Museum Trust to reactivate the Former Players Association. In the last month we have had a visit from Dennis Peapell who was in the Youth team that reached the final of the F A Youth Trophy as well as visits from descendants of Tommy Armstrong and Frank Richardson.

I must mention one individual club employee and that is Caroline in reception. In any organisation I have always felt the Receptionist is its public face and goes a long way to how people feel about a visit to the County Ground. Caroline is a real plus on the County Ground tours always seeing early arrivals are looked after and having a list of participants for myself. Caroline is involved with trying to get a Sensory Room for autistic supporters and I do hope you will support her in her endeavours. While on the subject of tours I must pay tribute to my two much valued assistants. Our President John Trollope adds so much to the tours with his knowledge of what the club was like and how things were done in his time at the Club as both player, manager and Youth Coach. Anthony Jenkins is our Harold Fleming expert. He started as guardian of the medals but has now built up a collection of items relating to the great man and has designed a quiz which adds variety to the tours. Can I close by saying to Museum members we always welcome questions about the club’s history. We may not know the answers but hunting them down is great fun. The more material we acquire the better chance we have of finding the answers. One of my current projects is to find out more about the Dubonnet Trophy and whether the two other clubs that won it still have theirs. I also have a suspicion that while the one currently in the trophy cabinet is the genuine thing and one time a replica was displayed in the foyer. The main reason for this belief is that I thought the one in the foyer which had frequently become a receptacle for cigarette butts had a crack in the rim. I would be very interested to see if anyone shares my memory of it. The real one is made of bronze and I have yet to find a heavier trophy awarded in any sport. It was made for the French F A and based on a design of a Vase in the British Museum.

Stop Press

The Supporters Trust are shortly to receive a larger than life statue of Don Rogers. The Museum is considering having small size replicas created for supporters to purchase. We would be interested to hear from anyone who might be interested in purchasing one and how much they would be willing to pay as numbers and type of material used would obviously be key to pricing it