O's Through The Ages - A Brief History Of Leyton Orient F.C.

Trevor Daivid Delves
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Leyton Orient were founded in 1881 by a cricket club in East London. They named themselves after a shipping company. They have spent most of their existence in the lower reaches of the Football League, winning nothing that anybody outside of E10 would consider significant. They have also survived two world wars, a string of financial disasters, an Italian owner who appointed eleven managers in three years, and relegation from the Football League after 112 consecutive years of membership. Orient Through the Ages is a ten-episode series — roughly thirty minutes each — covering the full history of the club from Victorian East London to the present day. Players who went to the Somme and didn't come back. Tommy Johnston, who scored 121 league goals and asked for his ashes to be interred at Brisbane Road.  Laurie Cunningham, who arrived from Archway and was at Real Madrid within five years. The 1978 FA Cup semi-final. A Channel 4 documentary Forbes named one of the five greatest sports films ever made. Justin Edinburgh, who won the National League title and was dead nine days later. Not the story of a glamour club. The story of a club that has endured — and why that turns out to matter more.

Episodes

  1. MAR 6

    Episode 2: They Took the Lead - Clapton Orient, the Footballers' Battalion, and the Cost of War ( 1905–1929))

    Send a text In December 1914, with the First World War four months old, ten Clapton Orient players attended a recruiting meeting at Fulham Town Hall and enlisted together. They were the first Football League club to enlist en masse. Within two years, three of them were dead on the Somme. This episode covers the first quarter-century of Orient's life in the Football League — early respectability in Division Two, the royal visit of 1921, a record crowd of 38,000 at Millfields Road — but its heart is the First World War, and the extraordinary sacrifice of the men who wore the club's colours on Saturday afternoons and then wore army uniform on the battlefields of France. We tell the story of Richard McFadden, who died near Serre in October 1916, and of what it means for a football club to carry the weight of that history. Player of the Era: Richard McFadden. The following is a collated record of all research sources used across the ten episodes of Orient Through the Ages. Sources are listed by episode and organised into books and primary sources, digital archives and databases, journalism and fan media, and Wikipedia entries. All facts, dates, scorelines, and biographical details were verified against at least one source before inclusion in the scripts. Where sources conflicted, the most reliable or corroborated account was used, and the discrepancy is noted in the relevant episode’s production notes. Episodes 01The Cricketers’ Club, 1881–1905 02They Took the Lead, 1905–1929 03Coming Home, 1929–1955 04A Season in the Sun, 1955–1966 05The Boy from Archway, 1966–1977 06...

    29 min

  2. MAR 6

    Episode 1: The Cricketers' Club - From Glyn Road to the Football League (1881–1905)

    Send a text In the summer of 1881, a group of cricketers from a nonconformist college in Homerton, East London, decided they needed something to do in the winter. They started playing football. They needed a name. One of their players worked for a shipping company whose vessels sailed east — towards India, towards China, towards the Far East. They called themselves Orient. This is the first episode of Orient Through the Ages, a ten-part series covering the full history of Leyton Orient Football Club from its Victorian origins to the present day. We begin at the beginning: the founding of the club in 1881, the slow journey from amateur kickabouts to professional football, the adoption of the Leyton name, and the moment — in 1905 — when Orient joined the Football League and became, officially, a proper club. It is the story of how an institution comes into being out of nothing. And it turns out that matters more than you might think. The following is a collated record of all research sources used across the ten episodes of Orient Through the Ages. Sources are listed by episode and organised into books and primary sources, digital archives and databases, journalism and fan media, and Wikipedia entries. All facts, dates, scorelines, and biographical details were verified against at least one source before inclusion in the scripts. Where sources conflicted, the most reliable or corroborated account was used, and the discrepancy is noted in the relevant episode’s production notes. Episodes 01The Cricketers’ Club, 1881–1905 02They Took the Lead, 1905–1929 03Coming Home, 1929–1955 04A Season in the Sun, 1955–1966 05The Boy from Archway, 1966–1977 06...

    22 min
  • 2 Episodes

About

Leyton Orient were founded in 1881 by a cricket club in East London. They named themselves after a shipping company. They have spent most of their existence in the lower reaches of the Football League, winning nothing that anybody outside of E10 would consider significant. They have also survived two world wars, a string of financial disasters, an Italian owner who appointed eleven managers in three years, and relegation from the Football League after 112 consecutive years of membership. Orient Through the Ages is a ten-episode series — roughly thirty minutes each — covering the full history of the club from Victorian East London to the present day. Players who went to the Somme and didn't come back. Tommy Johnston, who scored 121 league goals and asked for his ashes to be interred at Brisbane Road.  Laurie Cunningham, who arrived from Archway and was at Real Madrid within five years. The 1978 FA Cup semi-final. A Channel 4 documentary Forbes named one of the five greatest sports films ever made. Justin Edinburgh, who won the National League title and was dead nine days later. Not the story of a glamour club. The story of a club that has endured — and why that turns out to matter more.

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