Officials at Barnoldswick Town have begun work on producing a history of football in the area.
Although the club in its present form was founded in 1972, there have been a number of football clubs in the town in the past, and a team of current club officials, headed by Chairman Alverley Ashworth and Programme Editor Peter Naylor, have begun the task of gathering information and memorabilia on past clubs to add to the many items that they already have in their possession.
Peter explained: "We posted some old football photos in the local paper, one of them being of a team called Park Villa , asking if anyone could name any of the players. We had no success with that, but one of our supporters Paul Licastri came forward with three medals. Two are gold and one is silver, and all three are hallmarked.
"The two gold ones are inscribed with the team name (Park Villa and Lawrie's Own) and year so they are easy to date.
"The silver one from Barnoldswick FC is not inscribed but the hallmark dates it around 1909. Park Villa and Barnoldswick Town were fierce rivals in those days, although we believe Villa went out of existence in the late 1930's.
"The Park Villa medal is inscribed Park Villa Winners S & D.A.L 1919-20 and has the initials H.George. We think the S & DAL is Skipton & District Amateur League.
"We have a photo of a team called Lawrie's Own dated 1913, and the medal with their name on is inscribed Craven Cup Winners 1919-20 and bears the initials H.E.
We know Lawrie's Own reformed after the war and we think they eventually became the first Barnoldswick Town, although that is still under investigation.
"Paul is loaning the medals to an exhibition in Skipton celebrating 100 years of the Craven League, starting on the 24th May. In the meantime, if anyone has any other information relating to football in the Barnoldswick area over the years, we would be delighted to hear from them. Alverley's intention is that we will eventually be able to publish a document or brochure of some description with all the infomration and pictures we have gathered, so the more information we can get hold of the better".
Anyone with any information that may be of interest should contact Peter by e-mail at peter@marionbarrett.freeserve.co.uk.
Peter is also in the process of scanning in some old programmes from the past that feature others clubs in our league playing teams from Barnoldswick, and these will be added to the league website in due course.
