at a meeting on 10th October 1889. The newly elected
committee advertised for players and looked for a field to
rent. Although football had been around for centuries it
become an organized game with rules only when the football
Association was formed in 1871. Initially clubs were made
up of amateur players and football grounds were just unenclosed
fields. Brentford's first home ground was a rented field behind
the Local Board Offices at Clifden House with the Griffin pub in
Braemer Road serving as clubhouse and changing rooms. The
first home match was played on the 23rd November1889 against
Kew FC and resulted in a 1-1 draw the massive sum of half a
crown (12.5p) was taken at the gate.
Brentford's amateur status was called into question in 1899 when
the Middlesex FA for paying some of its players rather more than
the permissible travelling expenses hauled the club over the coals.
The officers of the Club were suspended and the Club itself fined
and suspended for a month Brentford FC bowed to the inevitable
and turned professional in 1900 and the following year formed
itself into a limited liability company 'Brentford Football and
sports Club' It's first manager employed for the 1903-4 season
was Richard Molyneux, a vastly experienced football administrator
who was a founder member of Everton FC in 1878.
The Clifden House ground was only available for three seasons;
the club then became peripatetic for several years renting fields
in Little Ealing, Windmill Lane and South Ealing and Boston Park
Cricket Club in York Rd
January 1904 the Club took a lease on its present ground formerly
a five-acre orchard that belonged to Chiswick brewery. Fullers
Smith and Turner. Fencing and seating stands from the cricket
club were removed ands hastily re-erected. The ground was called
Griffin Park after the name of the FullerSmith and Turner brewery
and the Griffin pub which had been the side's first clubhouse The
team's nickname 'Bees' is apparently due to a misunderstanding on
the part of the local paper hearing the crowd crying' Buck up B's
the paper printed it as 'Bees' The name stuck A unique feature of
Griffin Park is that unlike any other football ground in the country,
there are pubs on all four corners.
The first competitive home match to be played on the new ground
was on 1st September 1904 when Brentford drew with Plymouth Argyle,
watched by 5,500 spectators The team played in the southern League
until elected to the Football League Division Three for the 1920-21
season. In 1929-30 Brentford set an unsurpassed record by winning
all 21 home games. The Club's glory days were the 1930s when under
Secretary/Manager Harry Curtis, it won the Third Division (South)
Championship in 1932-3 and two seasons later (1934-5), took the second
Division Championship. On September 5th 1935 the Club made its home
debit in the First Division, when a crowd of almost 30,000 saw Blackburn
Rovers beaten 2-0 the 24th team on the trot to lose at Griffin Park.
The Bees finished a creditable fifth in the First Division that season,
the highest placed London Club. In 1937-8 Brentford fought their way
to the sixth round of the FA Cup. A then record crowd of 37,587
crammed into Griffin Park to watch them lose to Preston North End.
Griffin Park's record attendance is 38,678 for a cup-tie against
Leicester City in 1949. Although football continued during World War 11,
the usual fixtures list was abandoned because of the problems of
travelling and the FA set up a number of Regional Leagues. In 1942
the Bees won the London War Cup at Wembley Stadium watched by a crowd
of 69,792 (The highest ever for a Brentford game) Regular fixtures
were resumed in 1946-7 but Brentford was relegated to the Second
Division at the end of the season and Harry Curtis, Secretary/Manger
for 23 years resigned in 1949. At the end of the 1953-4 season they
were further relegated to the Third Division (South) and nine years
later (1961-2) to the Fourth Division. In the years that followed the
Club shuttled backwards and forwards between divisions, though they
never made it to the Premier League. At the end of the season 2001-2,
they disappointingly failed to win promotion to Division One when
they lost to Stoke City in the Division Two play-0ff final. Brentford
was one of the earliest clubs to realise the potential of floodlit
football installing lights in 1954. The first supporters club was
founded in 1910 and in 1967 Brentford fans managed to head off a
proposal to merge the Club with Queens Park Rangers. In 1983 a
fire in the boiler room gutted most of the Braemer Road enclosure,
also the visitors dressing room, the laundry room and all of the
players kits. One of the Club's all time great players was Patsy
Hendren who played for the team 400 times between 1911 and 1927
Patsy, born in Chiswick was actually more famous for his cricketing
prowess. He played cricket for England 51 times A top goal scorer
during Brentford's spell in the First Division was 'Big' Dave McCulloch
who scored 26 goals in 26 games in his first season (1935-6). Ron
Greenward later Team Manager for England was captain of Brentford FC
in the early 1950s and the signing for £16,000 of centre forward
Tommy Lawton in 1952 was a club record Lawton was appointed Player
/Manager in 1953. The record fee paid by Brentford is £750,000 for
Icelandic international Hermann Hreidarsson in September 1998. He
was subsequently sold to Wimbledon for £2.5 million.
At the time of writing (2002) cash-strapped Brentford are hoping
to sell Griffin Park for a housing development and find a new
ground elsewhere.
"BRENTFORD PAST" by Gillian Clegg
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