Royal Arsenal Football
The workers of Dial Square formed Dial Square FC in 1886 changing their name
later to Woolwich Arsenal FC playing at nearby marshes. Included in the founding group were two former Nottingham Forest players who wrote to their old club seeking kit. They responded with a full set of red jerseys and a ball.  In 1915 a move was made north of the river to Highbury and the club dropped the Woolwich from its name to become Arsenal.
Royal Arsenal related sport grounds

ROYAL ARSENAL TEAMS
First eleven season 1889-90
JM Bates, FW Beardsley, H Barbour, P Connolly, RT Horsington,
D Howat, H Offer, JW Julian, J McBean, JW Meggs, HR Robertson
 
8th October 1887 First round of the London Cup
Royal Arsenal V Grove House
Grove house conceded the game
In the next round they played Barnes
 
29th October 1887 Royal Arsenal, V, Barns  Lost 4 – 0
Team
FW Beardsley Goal A Brown and D Danskin (captain) Backs
R Price, B Banks and T Wells, Halfbacks S Ridgewell, A Morris,
C Bates, R Crighton, and T Bee Forwards
 
3 November 1888 Royal Arsenal  V  Phoenix Won 3 –0
London Association Cup
Played at the Manor Field Plumstead
Team        
FW Beardsley, goal  A Brown. and J Crighton, backs
D Danskin, JM Bates, and T Wells halfbacks A Morris, and J Hill right wing P Connolly, centre, J Charteris, and  W Scott, left wing
The next cup game played away at South Darenth
10 November 1888 Horton Kirby V Royal Arsenal Won 6—2
 
The next round at home to Dulwich
24 November 1888 Royal Arsenal  V Dulwich Won 4--2
Played at Plumstead
Team
FW Beardsley, goal A Brown and J B Crighton, backs
 D Danskin, JM Bates and T Wells, halfbacks, AJ Morris, JG Hill, P Connolly, JM Charteris, and W Scott forwards
 
8th December 1888 Royal Arsenal V Old St Pauls  Won 3--1
In this round Arsenal qualified for the semi-final of the London Association Cup
 
After Christmas Royal Arsenal Played in the second round of the
 Kent County Cup Away at Sayers Court
29 December 1888 Iona V Royal Arsenal Won 5 –1
Team
FW Beardsley A Brown, D Danskin, backs
E Hartland, M Bates, and T Wells halfbacks
AJ Morris, R Crighton, right wing, P Connolly, centre
J Saul, and W Scott, left wing
 
 
19th January 1889 Royal Arsenal V Clapton the Semi--final of
The London Association Senior Challenge Cup at Leyton
Lost 2—0
Team
FW Beardsley goal JB Crighton, J McBean, backs
A Brown, JM Bates, D Danskin,  halfbacks
AJ Morris, R Crighton, right wing, P Connolly centre,
JM Charteris, W Scott, leftwing,
 
19th April 1889 Boston V Royal Arsenal. Lost 4--1
The match was the first of three, specially arranged for the Easter holidays and was played on the Lord Nelson ground on Good Friday
In front of 1,200 spectators.
 
 
New Players of quality joined
 
James William Meggs (forward) a local born in Lewisham
Henry Thomas Offer (fullback) born in Devizes a joiner by trade
Richard Thomas Horsington (forward) an Engine fitter by trade
(Joined with, HT Offer from Swindon)
Humphrey Barbour (forward) born in Glasgow a Turner by trade
David Howat (right half) born in Preston He became a fitter in Dial Square
Hope Robertson (inside forward) born Whiteinch, Lanark
His previous club was Partick Thistle
William Steven Stewart, born in Dundee 1867
He was a machinist by trade
 
21st September 1889 Royal Arsenal V Tottenham Hotspur in a friendly
There was an attendance at the Manor Ground of 1,500
Royal Arsenal won 10—1
Team
FW Beardsley, (goal) H Offer, and J McBean, (Backs)
D Howat, JM Bates, and JW Julian (half backs)
RT Horsington, JW Meggs (right wing) H Barbour, (centre)
HR Robertson and J Crighton (left wing)
 
5th October 1889 Royal Arsenal V Lyndhurst
The first round of the FA Challenge Cup Match took Place at Plumstead
Before a crowd of 2,000 Royal Arsenal Won 11—1
 
In the second round away to Norwich Thorp
26th October Norwich Thorp V Royal Arsenal at Lakenham
Despite playing half an hour extra time score remained 2—2
The Thorp committee held a special meeting on the following
Monday and decided that it was impossible for the team to journey
To Woolwich for the replay Arsenal was given a bye to the next round

 Research suggested locations for Sportsman ground 2 
Research from "The real Arsenal Story" purchased 16th April 2016

Research taken from various sources on the internet listed below 16 April 2016:
Extracting key quotes for Manor ground and Sportsman ground.

http://www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk/archives/2799

  • 1886-87 – Plumstead Common (probably on the west of the common near St Margaret’s Grove)
  • 1887-88 – The Sportsman Ground (roughly where Woolwich Crown Court is currently located)
  • 1888-89 to 1889-90 – Manor Field (roughly where Belmarsh West prison is currently located)
  • 1890-91 to 1892-93 – Invicta Ground (in the area bordered by Mineral Street, Conway Road and Gallosson Road)
  • 1893-94 to 1912-13 – Manor Ground (named as Manor Field for 1893-94) – same location as Manor Field above

​Legend has it that they played a game during 1887-88 on the Manor Field against Millwall Rovers when the Sportsman Ground was flooded.
Legend also has it that the Sportsman Ground was a pig farm but that is not true.

http://www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk/archives/8989

If ever there was a defining moment in the history of Arsenal FC it came in the summer of 1890 when the decision was taken to move the club from the Manor Field to the Invicta Ground.
At the time this would have seemed just a natural progression for the club as it had already changed grounds several times, playing at
  • Plumstead Common (1886/7)
  • The Sportsman’s Ground (1887/8)
  • Mr Cavey’s Field (later to be known as the Manor Field), (played 30 March 1888 as a one off due to flooding of the Sportsman’s Ground)
  • The Manor Field (1888/90)
  • The Invicta Ground (1890/93)
So one more move was no big deal – especially as the grounds were all in the same area – the Manor Field being virtually opposite the Invicta.    But in fact the consequences of that move were enormous – although they were not to be seen until three years later.
Sadly most information about the Invicta is missing.  Hundreds of books and web sites mention the Invicta but almost all, suffering from the plague of plagiarism, repeat the same phrases.  All comment on the fact that some of the old terraces of the ground still exist in the gardens of houses that were built where the ground stood, but many other facts are either missing or wrongly stated.

http://goonerholic.com/2015/11/guest-post-a-brief-history-of-home/

  • Plumstead Common
Ground one — though it is a stretch to call it a ground — was Plumstead Common. Royal Arsenal played there in its inaugural 1886-87 season. The pub the players changed in, The Star, is still on Plumstead Common Road.

  • The Sportsman Ground
Ground two, the Sportsman Ground, was a few hundred yards closer to Woolwich than the Manor Ground, roughly where HMP Thameside Prison is today. The team played there for only six months from the start of the 1887-88 season before flooding drove them to what was then Manor Field on the Marshes. The Sportsman Ground, which was previously a field used for raising pigs, took its name from a long-gone pub where the players changed.

  • The Manor Ground 
The club had two spells at the Manor Ground, the three seasons to 1890 as a tenant and then for 20 years after returning from the Invicta Ground as owner.  A couple of miles east of Woolwich on Plumstead Marshes and famously muddy, the ground originally had no stands and spectators watched games standing on borrowed Army wagons. On its return, having bought the ground, the club erected a stand and built terracing. In 1893-94, our first season in the Football League, the typical gate was 6,000. A second stand was built in 1904.
The terracing at the Manor Ground was so steep that it was nicknamed the Spion Kop by soldiers returning from the Boer War (For younger ‘holics, the Battle of Spion Kop was a failed British assault on Boer forces holding a hill of that name in Natal, South Africa in 1900). Many clubs had steep terraces known as Kops, but ours was the first and predates Anfield’s by two years.
After the move to Highbury in 1913, the Manor Ground was abandoned and eventually became an industrial estate. That, in turn, fell on hard times and has now been redeveloped as the West Thamesmead Business Park.

  • The Invicta Ground
Ground four was the Invicta Ground on the south side of Plumstead High Street. Royal Arsenal played there for three seasons from 1890 before returning to the Manor Ground after the landlord tried to raise the rent. By then, Royal Arsenal had become Woolwich Arsenal and fully professional.
The ground was used briefly by an amateur side, Royal Ordinance Factories, before also being redeveloped for housing. Some of the properties in Hector Street, London SE18, which follows the goal line and one side of where the ground used to be, still have traces of the old terracing visible at the bottom of their gardens.

  • Ground? 
Ground? — The club’s first game, played under the name of Dial Square, taken from the sundial above one of the gates to the Woolwich Arsenal munitions factory, took place over the river on the Isle of Dogs, possibly on a field that is now Tiller Road.
Whether that was an ‘away’ game or just the only place they could find to play is uncertain. However, the pub the team met in, the Royal Oak, was next to the station at Woolwich Arsenal and Plumstead Common would have been more convenient. Like the Sportsman, the pub is long gone, but it is where the ‘Royal’ in Royal Arsenal came from, by the way.


comment from: North Bank Ned....

The exact location of the Sportsman Ground remains a matter of discussion. Plumstead Marshes extended down to the High Street/Plumstead Road in those days. If you look at early-19th century Ordinance Survey maps, Old Park Farm, poked up into a space between where the prison is today and Plumstead bus depot. I am guessing, and Mark Andrews — great link, btw, ‘Holic — may have more exact coordinates, that is where the ground was. I also suspect that by the time we played there it was a remnant of the farm north of the railway line that had been built in the 1850s. So vacant land suitable only for pigs and footballers. Later Victorian maps show the Manor Ground clearly marked on Griffin Manor Way, still extant and which runs up the prison’s western perimeter, which would put the Sportsman Ground further to the southeast of the prison.

comment from: Mark Andrews....Ned,
Cheers. I think the Sportsman was located where the new Serco prison is sited. Reason is much of the wording around the move to Manor Field leads to the conclusion that they moved a few fields up the Manor Way to the new ground from the Sportsman.

When RAFC played there the Sportsman pub was still open and was not knocked down until approx. 1905
As far as pubs go only the Star, the Who’d a Thought it, Lord Raglan and O’Neills (was Green Man) are still going with a link to Arsenal. All the others have been demolished or altered into something else.
The Sportsman, it seems certain, was also on Griffen Manor Way, a couple of fields to the south of the Manorway Gate out of the northeastern corner of the Royal Arsenal munitions factory (which was a huge site, 3 miles wide by 1 mile deep). When contemporary records talk of the team moving up a couple of fields from the Sportsman to the Manor Field, ‘up” appears to mean from the gate in the direction of Plumstead High Street, not the Marshes. The old maps don’t mark it as a public house, but they do mark what appears to be a square of buildings surrounded by fields on three sides. (You can see the outline of the edge of them in the map SCG posted.) Old maps don’t mark a farm there as such, but the Sportsman could have been a hostelry/small holding feeding and watering people going hunting on the Marshes rather than a pub on a street as we might think of one today. ,too, doubt it was a pig farm. However, it is not unlikely that a hostelry in open fields would have kept some livestock to feed family and customers. An 1874 Post Office directory lists John Marshall “beer retailer and cow keeper” as resident there. By 1881, the Sportsman was home to Thomas Walton, “beer house keeper”, his wife, their six children and a carman (driver of a horse-drawn vehicle), according to the Census of that year. The 1891 Census, by when Royal Arsenal had been and gone, listed Thomas Watson, “publican”, his wife, their three children and servant as living there.
Thomas Walton could have been the Norweigan’s ‘Piggy’ Walton. There is nothing to suggest he was a pig farmer as opposed to a beer-house keeper— and it seems that a team called Woolwich Union had been playing on his field for a couple of seasons before Royal Arsenal started using it, suggesting that any herds of anything were long gone, if, indeed, there had ever been any herds. However, it is not unreasonable to suppose the Walton family didn’t raise the odd chicken and pig or two in the backyard, or that the animals might not have occasional roamed over the football pitch, which was probably hard up to the buildings.
There is also a story that the goalkeeper, Fred Beardsley, really was the keeper of the goals, carting the posts home for storage after each game. No idea if that is true, but I can’t see Cech or Ospina doing that…

The Sportsman was a sports ground near a pig farm both run by the same chap Thomas “Piggy” Walton. Hence the sportsman was not a pig field but was close to one, and they could be heard on occasion while playing.


http://gunners.origo.no/-/bulletin/show/45415_hvor-laa-sportsman-ground?ref=checkpoint

Sportsman Ground was Royal Arsenal's home season 1887-1888. The first official match was played here on 8 October 1887. The home side won 3-1 at Grove House. The track was really a field at the farm pig farmer Walton, who was lying at the entrance to the outlying area Plumstead Marshes. Today they call this area Thamesmead. A club called Woolwich Union used the path to "piggy" Walton few seasons before Royal Arsenal started using it.
This we know: 

Recognising that we were not able to place Sportsman Ground during our first visit in Plumstead in January 2008 has been hard to bear. Afterwards, we spent a lot of time to mess around online and studied both old photos and maps that are posted. A major problem is that a large area corresponding Royal Ordnance Factory (ie Royal Arsenal factory) safety risks, only a white map. For it is quite possible that the pitch actually lying inside the factory grounds - on the other side of the road for Manor Ground.
More books ordered from Amazon and others in hopes of getting some new clues. In "Football Grounds of London" did we know that the path was named because it was named after Sportsman public house which lay nearby. Unfortunately it is not possible to track down more information about this pub today.However, the map from 1894 depicted some buildings on the west side of Griffin Road between the railway station and Manor Field (as it was then called). The pub could certainly have been there. "The Real Arsenal Story" tells a lot about the club's time in Plumstead, but little new about courses. The only interesting (think it was in this book) is the information that Sportsman Ground was narrow and partially enclosed by backyards. It tells also that the goal posts from this path will have been stored in the yard of the goalkeeper Fred Beardsley, who lived in Coxwell Road, when it was not training or fighting. As the whole site is gone from the map, it is impossible to know whether there were buildings opposite the Manor Field confirming this information. Also the book "Rebels For The Cause" describes much of what happened while Arsenal remained in South London, but unfortunately there is little help to be in the hunt for Sportsman Ground.
Friday 29 October it was time for a second visit in Plumstead to find out where the path lay. Thomas and I followed Griffin Road past the buildings where Manor Ground had been. Next area to the right, where Sportsman Ground also could have been, was a huge construction site. We continued up to the main gate of Belmarsh prison. Approximately there remained probably pig farmer Walton added. It was he who owned the pitch. Then we crossed the road and mess around a bit on the other side - including right down to the river Thames - before checking the circumstances surrounding the bus depot (where some falsely claim is rather Manor Ground). This whole area is very low profile and can vote well with the information that the pitch was easily flooded. In fact, there is a football field there. Rain and the snow (!) Day before had actually done it properly wet. Something pig manure smelled albeit not, but it has nevertheless not been pigs there after 1887. Perhaps "New Sportsman", which we christened the path we took, the place where Arsenal played some of their first matches.
For lack of wardrobe at the Sportsman Ground and Manor Field were among others pub Green Man used to shift. An address list on the back of the map from 1894 shows that it was in 67 Plumstead High Street. Today there pub O'Dowds having this address
- Update 15 September 2008: The track got this name because it let near Sportsman Pub. 
- The track was generally in a poor condition and was easily flooded when there was precipitation. That means it was a low profile. 
- When Royal Arsenal would meet Millwall 11. February 1888 it was not possible to play due to stormwater. But along (Griffin) Manor Road towards Plumstead station lay Manor Field (later Manor Ground). It was rented for the occasion. The next two seasons played Arsenal on this path 
- The ancient maps we have seen so far gives little indication what existed in the area. It was well actually characterized as uncultivated and not worth to be involved on some maps. On a map from 1872, however drawn some buildings that may well be a farm. They are located approximately 100 meters from the Manor Ground, but on the same side of the road. The buildings were unchanged in later versions of the map. The area nellom buildings (farm?) And Manor Ground is large enough to fit a football field. There are also a couple of other fields around the possible farm. We are in case firmly against the wall of Belmarsh prison, where among others Ronald Biggs has been captured. 
- On the other side of the road there is not a single hold point that can confirm or deny whether there was any football here. On the other hand we are told in the book "The official illustrated history of Arsenal" told erroneously that the Manor Ground was lying on the side of the road - where there is currently a bus garage into a a large roundabout. The old map reproduced in the book, however, shows how Manor Ground was - on the other side of the road. It may therefore be a possibility that there was a court at the bus lot, but that historians have confused the names.  Also others have begun to show interest in the topic Information required to get an idea: Find the lowest point in the area. Check this overview screen for distances between pubs (which was fitted wardrobes) and a possible location of Sportsman Ground.

http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/25245

Mike T, the Arsenal History Society has been trying to unravel the Dial Square issue for the last couple of years, in fact we have a blog that works on it regularly (www.blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk).

In essence Arsenal was formed as a footballing off shoot of Dial Square Cricket Club, but probably never played under the Dial Square name. The fabled first match on the Isle of Dogs next to an open sewer, if it did exist, probably took place with the club having no name, or being Royal Arsenal. Certainly by match number 2 they were Royal Arsenal, and continued as such until 1893 when they entered the league.
The ground in question was almost certainly the original Millwall ground, before they moved south of the river. There are numerous articles reviewing the evidence on the above mentioned site.

The ground you are thinking of, as a previous Arsenal ground, was the Invicta, which Royal Arsenal used until the club split in two - one part becoming Woolwich Arsenal and the other becoming Royal Ordnance Factories who played in the Southern League.
There is no report of any sewer by that.
The Manor Ground was used by Arsenal Reserves and the school and youth teams, until it was bought by Woolwich Arsenal in June 1893 as it was thought that ROF FC was about to whisk it away from them.
Thanks I wasnt aware that there was such confusion as to Arsenals past. Ever thought about asking the BBC if they can feature you on Who Do You Think You Are?

The Sportsman ground was rented by Royal Arsenal from a Pig farmer, called "Piggy Walton" for their 1887-8 games. The ground was not a farm but a sports facility entitled the "Sportsman Running field" where they also held cricket, athletics, dog racing and cycling. Virtually all the previous histories on Arsenal have taken the fact he was a pig farmer and assumed they played on his farm. They did not, but played on land next to the pub where he was also landlord at the Sportsman pub.
The team played their home games here for two periods, from 1887-1889 and then 1893 to 1913. I speak, of course, of the Manor Ground, Plumstead.

Internet source

Having been formed by Scottish munitions worker David Danskin and Durham socialist Jack Humble in 1886, Arsenal played their first ever match against Eastern Wanderers on 11 December, 1886. The game was not played in Woolwich; in fact, it wasn`t even played in South London. Instead, the players hopped on the Woolwich Ferry to Tiller Road in Wapping, near the local dockyard. (The site is now a leisure centre and indoor sports complex). With no kit, Arsenal, who it is thought took to the field under the name Dial Square, wore a fetching selection on multi coloured knickerbockers. The pitch had no markings, the goal had no crossbars (crossbars weren`t introduced by the Football Association until the following year) and the field had a large open sewer running all the way around it, meaning the match ball was "dunked" dozens of times in sewage, making for something of an unpleasant health hazard. Given the lack of pitch markings and crossbars, it is difficult to see how any erstwhile official recordings were made, but history decrees that Dial Square won the match 6-0

Internet source

​During the summer of 1887, the club decided to play their games at the nearby Sportsman Ground in Plumstead, less than a mile away from Plumstead Common. The grass was slightly more becoming, being as it was, an old pig farm; it was well tended and untouched by the public. However, the field had a nasty habit of water logging into an unplayable quagmire, even under the slightest sprinkle of precipitation

Internet source

in February 1888, Royal Arsenal were due to play host to their fierce local rivals Millwall Rovers, but club officials turned up on the morning of the game to find the pitch submerged once more. With a big crowd expected, the club did not want to postpone the match. Eyes fell upon a field on Manor Road, next to Plumstead Station and less than a mile away from the Sportsman Ground. The club took the decision to play the fixture, an entertaining 3-3 draw, there and assumed permanent residency. Royal Arsenal officials promptly renamed Manor Field the Manor Ground

Internet source

The Sportsman Ground, Plumstead
The next year, the club moved to the Sportsman Ground, an oft-waterlogged marsh named after a nearby pub. Depending on which source you believe, The Sportsman Ground is now either a prison, or a bus garage. 


Internet source

With the Sportsman proving unsuitable, the club moved to the nearby Manor Ground, which was muddy and smelly, due to the open sewer running down one side. It must have been the only ground where throw-ins were contested with the cry:
Their throw, ref!’
 
They lasted 18 months before, as if by magic, someone built the Invicta Ground, a football stadium in Plumstead, right near the station, with stands, terraces, changing rooms and no access to raw sewage.

Internet source

Initially playing on a field located in the Isle of Dogs and using pitches on Plumstead Common and the Sportsman Ground on Plumstead Marshes, the club soon moved into an adjacent field known as the Manor Field. 

Becoming the Manor Ground, it was renowned for being notoriously muddy and had the feature of an open sewer running along the southern side of the pitch. Being not much more than a pig field, the ground supported the most basic of playing and spectator facilities. It was soon clear however, that a new home would have to be found to accommodate the 1,000 or so people regularly attending home matches at the venue.

Who provided the goal posts.?
Let us say that the Dial Square team really did hire a selection of boats to go across the river, they would still have two problems.  One would be the taking of goal posts (which by and large precludes the 12 mile walk and puts the journey back on a Thames crossing), and the other would  be asking the pilots to wait for the match to finish to take everyone back again – which would have  made the outing difficult


One might of course assume that they were from the Isle of  Dogs, and that Dial Square was playing an away game, but if so why had the Wanderers got such a bad place to play?  Surely if that were their home they would have sorted a better ground out?
And come to that why were they playing the newly formed Dial Square who had never played before, and who had no kit, and then getting stuffed 6-0.  In fact the lack of all this  evidence, and the fact that the Isle of Dogs story comes from one source which cannot be accredited in any way, really does make the whole story seem preposterous.

“The Sportsman ground was rented by Royal Arsenal from a Pig farmer, called "Piggy Walton" for their 1887-8 games. The ground was not a farm but a sports facility entitled the "Sportsman Running field" where they also held cricket, athletics, dog racing and cycling. Virtually all the previous histories on Arsenal have taken the fact he was a pig farmer and assumed they played on his farm. They did not, but played on land next to the pub where he was also landlord at the Sportsman pub”
 
https://thebeautifulhistory.wordpress.com/clubs/arsenal/

Arsenal Football Club began life in the South-East London suburbs of Woolwich and Plumstead when a group of predominantly Scottish workers at the Woolwich Arsenal Armament Factory decided to form the Dial Square football team in late 1886. The first game of the club was against a team called Eastern Wanderers on the 11th December 1886. The game was played on a piece of open ground that someone had found on the Isle of Dogs. Apparently the pitch was shapeless with one portion being described as a ditch by some and as an open sewer by others.
 

http://abergkampwonderland.co.uk/arsenal-history/

The Sportsman Ground is now a Prison next to Belmarsh called HMP Thameside Prison run by Serco.
It is just up from where the Manor Ground used to be which is now a warehouse off Griffin Way and bounded by Nathan Way and Hadden Road.

Maps from 1800's
1864 ​http://maps.nls.uk/view/103313063
1866 http://maps.nls.uk/view/102343435
1894 ​http://maps.nls.uk/view/103675556
None of these mark a Piggery, but then neither a Piggery or a sports ground would require buildings. Plenty of Dykes in the vicinity to back-up the open sewer location. There were Piggeries in the area until Southern Thamesmead was built. One was roughly where Southmere is today.
Where was the Sportsman ground located?

From my research the bullet points below are to identify a possible location of the Sportsman football ground site.

  • Flooding - more flooding in the east end of marshes
  • Open Sewage – yes Dykes and Crossness sewage works
  • Plumstead marshes – yes
  • Pig farm – There were Piggeries in the area until Southern Thamesmead was built.​
  • Area was not fully Royal Arsenal owned in 1886
  • Were there sports pitches near Church “manor way” during 1887/8, - Possibly same site as ROFSA grounds which developed over the years? - needs investigating
  • Quotes suggest the Sportmans field was only 200 yards from Manor ground 
  • http://pubshistory.com/KentPubs/Plumstead/Sportsman.shtml
          Griffin manorway was where the sportsman pub was. 
http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/25245
"The Sportsman ground was rented by Royal Arsenal from a Pig farmer, called "Piggy Walton" for their 1887-8 games. The ground was not a farm but a sports facility entitled the "Sportsman Running field" where they also held cricket, athletics, dog racing and cycling. Virtually all the previous histories on Arsenal have taken the fact he was a pig farmer and assumed they played on his farm. They did not, but played on land next to the pub where he was also landlord at the Sportsman pub” - how far is next? 
What happened to the Manor Ground and Sportsman pub area?
The site of the Manor Ground became part of the Royal Arsenal during WWI, in 1914 and was built-over. The 1920 plan states a Case and Fuze factory and the tool shop, machine tools, for Quick Firing Cartridge Ammunition Factory No.1. It also had the Lacquering shop which in later days the factory became involved with Torpedoes, it was bombed in WW2, and rebuilt in the early 1950s. The new buildings were sold to the London County Council shortly afterwards to form the industrial estate that the Ford Motor Company used until 1988. It was still painted in Ford's corporate blue when Peabody cleared the site last year. A very important loss.

The Lacquer shop, E81a/b, in Nathan Way had a real history behind it and Peabody swept it away last year. I wonder if they'd have done that if they'd had known that the family of every man who died in WWI was presented with a personalise Bronze plaque and that the Lacquer  
shop was the building those plaques were finished in.
ROFSA - Royal Ordnance Factory Sports Association
​
ROFSA - By Dave Rogers
​
During the initial rise of WAFC the Arsenal had another club called ROF which briefly had a go in the Southern League without much success. In 1900 the ROFSA was formed and encompassed Football Rugby Cricket Bowls Tennis etc.The football club which at times had four or five teams played in the South London Alliance, Kent Amateur, London, South East Combination and Spartan Leagues. In the 1970's the name was changed to Royal Arsenal Sports & Recreation Association (RASRA). By the 1980's the club had little connection with the Arsenal and some years later changed it's name to Seven Acres. The ground at Church Manorway is still in use though Crossrail has nicked a bit of it. The derelict Tennis courts by the railway have long gone but the clubhouse still stands. A reminder of local industry education and military gone, other local clubs included RNC Greenwich, Woolwich/Thames Poly, STC, Peek Feans Bicc Calendars etc. ROFSA clubs existed up and down the country at other arms and munitions factories but the club featuring in the senior south eastern amateur leagues was the Woolwich version.