​The Old Spotted Dog Ground is historically important not only as the oldest senior football venue in London, but also the ground where Walter Tull – one of the first Black players in England – started off playing as an amateur from 1908, before the start of a professional career with Spurs the following year.

Walter, brought up in the Methodist Children’s Home and Orphanage in Bethnal Green, was a talented player who had to endure appalling racist abuse and whose life was cut short in 1918 in the senseless slaughter of the first world war.

In February at Clapton Community FC’s AGM, members voted to give the alley between Disraeli Road and Upton Lane a new name, “Walter Tull Way”. The new street signs were installed at either end of the alley in March.

The AGM also agreed to ask the Old Spotted Dog Ground Trust to install an information board explaining who Walter Tull was and why his name was chosen. CCFC member Peter Ashan, one of Youth Training’s coaches and a local historian who organises Black history walks in east London, worked on the wording of a plaque. Another member, designer Andy Stevens, focused on its production and CCFC is enormously grateful to Andy’s company, Graphic Thought Facility in Bethnal Green, for their generosity in donating the cost of the plaque.

Finally, we received the support of the Walter Tull Archive and his surviving relatives, the Finlayson family in Scotland.

The information plaque will be unveiled before the final Women’s First Team game of the season against Brentford FC on Sunday, May 4. It will serve as a reminder that Walter Tull is an important part of the history of Forest Gate and by overcoming adversity and racism, became an inspiration for justice and equality. These are the values that CCFC is striving for too.

Kevin Blowe