There are not many blue plaques in Manchester dedicated to football – There’s the Manchester Corinthians blue plaque (see elsewhere on this site for details of the campaign); the Football League first meeting (a red plaque); Newton Heath’s first pitch (a red plaque which is the standard colour for Manchester sites); the Fallowfield FA Cup final (black if I remember right) and that’s about it. There used to be one to mark Manchester City’s birth positioned on the Aces public house close to Clowes Street in West Gorton BUT this vanished shortly after the pub closed many years ago. This image shows the plaque as it looked when I took this photo in the early 2000s. It’s seeing this plaque years ago that first got me thinking about marking footballing sites in Manchester.
What happened to it? It was obviously stolen but where is it today?
It was positioned incorrectly and should have been a few streets away to mark the actual first pitch of St Mark’s or maybe even the church itself.
If anyone knows where this plaque is today then please get in touch. Incidentally, I think the plaque marking United’s Newton Heath birth is missing too but I’ve not checked on it recently.
There are other plaques around Greater Manchester connected with football, for example the one at Stalybridge for Bert Whalley (again, see elsewhere on the site for the details of that).
Gary James' Football Archive 