Sports & Recreation Clubs
A pristine cricket square, but the outfield getting worn already ... and there are five months of rugby training and school football to go!
“
A mixture of bank and personal loans and all the trauma of personal guarantors meant we were able to take it over. We had the best of intentions, but it was quite a short lease
obvious direct association. By all accounts, it was very appropriate because they had a playing reputation that went with the name.” The Battersea Ironsides Sports Club today
is a far cry from those early days and embraces cricket and football, as well as rugby. Eric calls it a three-pronged set-up, though each sport is run quite separately. The military association is long gone, but the Club’s origins are still an important part of its heritage, especially to the rugby section. Battersea Ironsides Cricket Club began back in the 1950s and Eric has been its secretary for over thirty years. The football club followed soon after. Like their rugby counterparts, they were wandering sides with no playing home. This changed in the 1970s when there was an opportunity to share a ground owned by Wandsworth Council. Ironsides cricket and football paid for pitch and pavilion use there for a number of years. The rugby club paid for and used
two other council pitches on nearby Garrett Green, which it continues to do today for matches. It was 1983 when the club - all three sections - first made its home where it is now. At the time, it was owned by Holloway Properties, part of what became the Aviva Group. The then tenants were moving out of London and those running Battersea Ironsides saw it as an opportunity to get their own ground. “A mixture of bank and personal loans and all the trauma of personal guarantors meant we were able to take it over. We had the best of intentions, but it was quite a short lease,” recalls Eric. “It came as no surprise that we had
difficulty renewing this lease in 1990. We had found it hard to keep up our maintenance and repair obligations because absolutely everything was done by club volunteers.” “It was - and still is - Metropolitan Open
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