page_title: Forest School F.C.
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Forest School F.C. / History / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Forest School football team pictured at the front of the school in 1884. Only ten players are pictured, R. C. Guy (Captain, future Forest headmaster), F. R. Pelly (standing second from the left, future England football player).
context_page_description: Forest School F.C. is the first XI football team from Forest School, Walthamstow and is the only school team to have played in the F.A. Cup.
context_section_description: Forest had an important role in the development and creation of Association Football, and the Common at the front of the school may well be regarded as a "cradle of the game". In the school's early years there was no sport apart from informal kick-abouts by the pupils, but by the 1840s cricket was played and hockey was in vogue in the early 1850s. Football began at Forest in 1857 when Frederick Guy took over as headmaster; it was played on The Common, at the front of the school. The Common was a rather uneven playing surface, with the great chestnut trees at the side of the pitch "in play" and some famous iron railings marking the north end of the pitch. Tradition records some great battles between Charles W. Alcock and F.J. Poole, in which the object was to barge the other player over the iron railings! The earliest reported match against another school was in Forest's first season on 24th February 1858, when Forest beat Chigwell School 5-4 on The Common. Another early game was on Saturday 16 November 1861, when Forest School, (playing as "Walthamstow"), lost to a Westminster School side (playing as "Bounding Bricks") by three goals to nil. A return match was played four weeks later, and in 1862 the school played against Old Westminsters (playing as Elizabethan Club).
caption: Forest football team 1884.
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