This is the complete version of an article I wrote in July 2002 about the years Reading played at Caversham Cricket Ground. A slightly edited version appeared in the 2002 Caversham Jubilee Festival programme.
Within the living memory of (almost) all of us, Reading Football Club have played at only two grounds, Elm Park and Madejski Stadium. Lost in the mists of time is that the ground the club used before the move to Elm Park in 1896 was in Caversham.
In 1889 Reading had been playing at Coley Park for seven years, but the club needed to move because the spectators there were too rowdy! The new home chosen was the ground of Caversham Cricket Club, probably because the Reading FC president James Simonds was also the president of the cricket club. Of course, after the Coley Park experience, perhaps they also thought that a more genteel location was appropriate!
I'm sure many reading this will remember the location of the cricket club - it was on the part of Christchurch Meadow adjacent to Gosbrook Road, which these days is between Patrick Road and George Street. It's currently occupied by two football pitches with a ditch at the southern boundary (the "Gos Brook", perhaps?).
The new ground was by no means ideal - for a start it was in Oxfordshire, it was also prone to flooding (perhaps not a big shock for an area that is part of the Thames flood plain), and access was not good. There was no Reading Bridge in the 19th century, so if spectators from the town side of the river didn't use Caversham Bridge, they had to take a boat trip. The oldest surviving Reading programme, from an FA Amateur Cup tie against Old Carthusians in 1894, includes an advert with the following words:
NOTICE.
The MOST DIRECT WAY to the Ground is to ferry the Thames from
ADAMS & GINGELL'S BOAT-HOUSE.
Fare - 1d. Return.
Many people did use this route and after Reading had played at the ground for a while, they started selling combined match and ferry tickets on the south side of the river to ease congestion . The ferry operators invested in a bigger boat after a couple of seasons and the local newspaper estimated that over a thousand people were making the boat trip in the half-hour before bigger games.
On the pitch, Reading started life in Caversham on the wrong foot. In the first game there, on 5th October 1889, they lost 6-1 to a team from the Second Battalion of the Royal Scots Guards, Aldershot. Reading played in blue and white stripes and their goal was scored by Hill. Like most games at this time, that was a friendly because Reading did not yet play in a League. The only competitive games in the first five seasons at the Cricket Ground were in three knockout tournaments - the FA Cup, the FA Amateur Cup and the Berks and Bucks Cup. There was some cup success because Reading won the last named competition in 1892, for the second time in the club's history (and the last time for over 100 years).
However, some of the friendly games were of great interest because it gave Reading the chance to compete against professional sides from the North of England. Reading's first ever game against a such a club was at Caversham, against Burslem Port Vale. To much surprise, Reading won 2-1 and the game produced record gate receipts of over £24!
That game took place in December, but more common was a match forming part of an end-of-season tour by a northern club looking to raise enough money to pay their players over part of the summer. The last such game at Caversham was in April 1896 and saw the visit of Everton, who had just finished third in the Football League and were runners-up the season before. A crowd of over 3,000, half of whom travelled to the ground by ferry, saw the Merseysiders win 2-0.
Three days later Reading played their last ever game in Caversham, beating an Aldershot XI 5-0. The visiting team were mostly soldiers so perhaps there was some revenge for the drubbing handed out in the very first game at the ground.
Undoubtedly the flooding and access problems were important factors in the decision to move again, but the principal reason was that in 1895 Reading had decided to turn professional and so needed a bigger ground. One year after being one of the founder-members of the Southern League, a clear majority of the club's members decided that the only way for the club to progress was to start paying players. Over 40 members resigned in protest at the decision, including the president James Simonds, and formed Reading Amateur Football Club. The relationship between the Cricket Club landlords (with Simonds still their president) and the professional Football Club tenants in that last season must have been quite frosty, and indeed Reading considered a move to Kensington Road in the summer of 1895.
As it turned out the football club decided to continue at the Caversham Cricket Ground for one more season. In fact, the first game of the 1895/96 season instead had to be played on the field next to the cricket ground - then known as Cox's Meadow - because at that time of year the Cricket Club were still using the main ground.
At the end of the season, three locations were put forward for a new ground. Land behind The Moderation public house in Caversham Road (perhaps the site today of E. P. Collier school, the buildings of which date from 1898) was a possibility. Palmer Park, by then the home of the breakaway Amateur Club, was also considered. In the end it was the offer of a lease of the land at Elm Park that won most support. In 1896, Reading played their first game at their latest home and were to stay there for over 100 years.
One more incident from those seven years in Caversham stands out - the spectators at Coley Park may have been rowdy, but in 1891 local youths burnt down the Caversham Cricket Club pavilion. Perhaps north of the river isn't that genteel after all!
For information about other grounds Reading Football Club have used, click here.
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