This is a momentous year for Gloucester Rugby and their supporters as the club celebrate their 150^th anniversary.

Gloucester are, of course, one of the great clubs in English rugby, and indeed world rugby, and they continue to rub shoulders with the very best.

They may be 150 years old but the good times continue to roll as the current team play to near packed houses at Kingsholm and all over Europe.

They’ve had some great games this season – the recent 28-26 win over Harlequins immediately springs to mind – and over the years they’ve been involved in some tumultuous occasions, occasions that have been painstakingly documented in print and online over the past few years by Gloucester Rugby Heritage.

Gloucester Rugby Heritage are a charitable organisation “with the declared purpose of advancing the education of the public in the history of Gloucester Rugby Club and the part it has played in the life of the city of Gloucester and the county of Gloucestershire, by collecting, preserving and sharing its heritage.”

When it was suggested to The Local Answer that Gloucester Rugby Heritage would like to submit an article we said ‘yes please’, and within days Malc King, chairman of Gloucester Rugby Heritage had written a story, outlining in detail everything that they do.

Malc wrote:

When asked what comes to mind when Gloucester is mentioned, most people will answer cathedral, docks and rugby, but not necessarily in that order.

Rugby has been at the heart of the city for 150 years, and attracts passionate support from many of the inhabitants of the city and the surrounding area, so the Gloucester Rugby Club has built up a rich history, which has been thoroughly researched in recent years.

The club was founded in 1873, initially playing on a public park at the Spa, before acquiring its own ground at Kingsholm in 1891.

The old wooden grandstand, which had stood on the south side of Kingsholm since 1933, was demolished in the summer of 2007 to make way for the present grandstand.

During the demolition, old photographs, documents and other memorabilia, some dating back to the 19th century, were found in the bowels of the stand, where they had been stored by generations of club officials, who did not want them cluttering up their offices, but thought they should not be discarded.

They were headed into a skip, but fortunately one of the demolition contractors asked if these things should really be thrown away, and a quick recovery operation was mounted. This resulted in 31 large boxes of material being shipped round the corner to Gloucestershire Archives in Alvin Street, now known as the Heritage Hub.

The county archivist, Heather Forbes, recruited a small team of keen Gloucester Rugby supporters – Malc King, John Theyers and John Cowen – to make an assessment of this material.

All of the material rescued from Kingsholm was catalogued and is available to the public, stored in climate-controlled conditions to preserve it for future generations.

In addition to the wealth of material from the club, Gloucester Rugby Heritage has subsequently received donations from more than 100 individuals, many of them former players.

There are now some 3,600 documents and photographs in the archive in the heritage hub, and there are another 850 artefacts held at Kingsholm, many of them on display there, including jerseys, caps and blazers.

It was decided that there was so much in the archive which would be of public interest, that it should form the basis of a Gloucester Rugby archive, that an online archive should be developed, and that the material should be used for educational purposes.

A larger team of volunteers was assembled to bring these ideas to fruition.

In order to meet these ambitious plans, substantial funding was required, and in 2008 a bid for finance from the National Heritage Lottery Fund was successful to the tune of nearly £50,000.

Over the next three years, this allowed a wide range of permanent static displays at Kingsholm, educational resources for local schools tied to the national curriculum, and the delivery of a Gloucester Rugby Heritage website.

Further sponsorship by Ecclesiastical Insurance from 2012 to 2015 allowed additional displays, expansion of the online archive, additional educational materials, subsidised educational visits to Kingsholm, and the publication of books.

Gloucester Rugby Heritage was originally set up as a group within the Friends of Gloucestershire Archives, but by 2015 it was evident that it had developed to the point where it could stand on its own feet.

So it was agreed that it should become a separate organisation. The Charity Commission had recently introduced a new class of charity known as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO).

Gaining registration with the charity commissioners in 2016, the Gloucester Rugby Heritage CIO came into being with the declared purpose of advancing the education of the public in the history of Gloucester Rugby Club and the part it has played in the life of the city of Gloucester and the county of Gloucestershire, by collecting, preserving and sharing its heritage.

Dick Williams, webmaster of the Gloucester Rugby Heritage website, has digitised vast quantities of heritage material, which can be viewed at www.gloucesterrugbyheritage.org.uk.

This presents a wealth of information, including a record of every match played by the club, thousands of match programmes and reports, photographs of teams and players, family relationships between players, player profiles, interviews of former players, and reproductions of historic documents.

It is a fabulous resource for anyone with an interest in Gloucester Rugby, it attracts interest and questions from around the world, and no other rugby club has anything like it.

Gloucester Rugby Heritage writes an article for each home match programme, has given talks to the community about the history of the club, and has published several books.

First was a 40-page digest of highlights of the club’s history, followed by a much more substantial work entitled ‘They Played for Gloucester and Fought for Their Country’.

Written by Martin and Teresa Davies, it told the story of the Gloucester Rugby players who interrupted their playing careers to answer the call to arms in the Boer War, the Great War and World War Two.

Some never returned, and they are commemorated on a plaque mounted by Gloucester Rugby Heritage at Kingsholm.

In order to present the results of many years of research, it was decided to produce a series of large format books to fully record the history of the club. The first was ‘Kingsholm: Castle Grim, the Home of Gloucester Rugby’, which recounted the development of Kingsholm over the first 125 years of rugby at the ground.

There followed ‘Representative Rugby at Kingsholm: International, County and Invitation Teams’ and ‘Gloucester Up for the Cup: Gloucester Rugby in Cup Competitions’, both providing comprehensive coverage.

The fourth in the series, ‘Gloucester Rugby: The Players’ has been published recently.

The largest yet at nearly 400 pages, a team of authors took three years to research and write it. There is an appendix compiled by Gloucester Rugby Heritage’s statistician, Chris Collier, which lists the career records of the 1,985 players who have represented the club from 1873-2022.

There are quite a few who played only once, and many who had long playing careers, with Alan Brinn’s 574 appearances being the most.

Many great players and many great characters have played for the club, and, after much debate, the most notable were selected for individual profiles, which form the main section of the book.

Every player who could boast at least 100 appearances, every player who won an international cap while a Gloucester player, and all club captains have been accorded an individual profile, as have others who did something extraordinary or were a particular favourite of the Kingsholm faithful.

The book is also well illustrated, with a photo accompanying every player profile, and a set of stunning action photos from Martin Bennett, who has been club photographer for the past 15 years.

George Skivington, head coach at Gloucester Rugby, wrote the foreword for the book. He believes that the club is very special because of its heritage, and has ensured that every player understands this by getting them to research former players, and explains that “we now have awards with their names on, calls named after them and pictures involving them in our team room… I feel very privileged to be part of this great club and look forward to uncovering more great stories in this latest edition.” 

He will find no shortage of them among the individual player profiles. The book can be bought at the Gloucester Rugby club shops for £25, which represents a £5 discount on the list price.

And look out for the fifth and final Gloucester Rugby Heritage book, which will be published later this year to coincide with the 150^th anniversary of the club. It will present a summary of every season, 1873-2023, including details of every match played.