Earliest Photograph of England Football Team 1876

Derby Local Studies Library recently hit the headlines when a customer came across the earliest known photograph of an England football team, whilst searching through local newspapers on microfilm.

An article with the photograph appeared in The Derbyshire Football Express, Saturday 6 March 1926, on page 7. The newspaper interviewed Edgar Field, aged 71, a local Derby resident. Edgar provided his reminiscences of football fifty years earlier, along with the photograph in which he appears with nine of his team mates.

Derby City Libraries is pleased to reproduce the original article in full, with the photograph. You can also view the newspaper’s front page of Saturday 6 March 1926; a day when Derby County returned to the top of Division Two, having beaten Stoke City 1-0.

The library has The Derbyshire Football Express available to view on microfilm from 1906 to 1933.

For contact details and how to find us, please click here

To view the full article and photograph, please click here (file size ~ 2MB)

To view the front page, please click here (file size ~ 3.45MB)

If you wish to reproduce these pages in whole or in part, please contact the librarian at localstudies.library@derby.gov.uk