Arsenal

Probably the most widely known back story of any football club - Ask any fan why Arsenal are called the Gunners and you’ll get the same answer: the club was born in the shadow of one of Britain’s greatest military-industrial powerhouses – the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich.

The Royal Arsenal, originally “the Warren”, was founded on the south bank of the Thames in the late 17th century as a gun wharf and proofing ground. By the Victorian era it was a vast, cutting-edge complex employing tens of thousands, churning out rifles, heavy artillery, shells, explosives, and naval guns. It was also an innovation lab: breech-loading and rifled artillery, Armstrong guns, guncotton and cordite propellants, advanced fuzes, mass-production lines for munitions – all of it tested and perfected here before being shipped to battlefields across the Empire. At its First World War peak, it covered 1,285 acres and employed over 80,000 people.

Among that workforce in 1886 was a Scottish mechanical engineer, David Danskin. He and a group of fellow football enthusiasts from the Dial Square workshop – named for the sundial over its entrance – each chipped in sixpence to form a works team. They called themselves Dial Square FC and won their first match 6–0 against Eastern Wanderers. Within weeks they renamed themselves Royal Arsenal, after their parent factory.

That year the team adopted their now famous red and white colours. There is a long standing story that several players from Nottingham Forest joined the club, and when they asked their old side for spare kit, Forest obliged. Thus Royal Arsenal adopted the red shirts and white trim they still wear today. However, in an article in the Coventry Evening Standard in 1931 it is reported instead that a team official was sent out to purchase a new kit from a local trader - he found one in Woolwich who provided them with their first red kits.

In those early years they moved grounds frequently – from Plumstead Common to the Sportsman Ground on Plumstead Marshes, then to Manor Field. The Manor Ground’s pitch was poor and its southern touchline was bordered by the Southern Outfall Sewer, from whose embankment freeloaders could watch matches. Still, Arsenal were on the rise. By 1890 they’d moved to the Invicta Ground, become the first club in London to turn professional, and changed their name to Woolwich Arsenal. They were elected to the Football League in 1893 – the first club from the south of England to join – and in 1904 reached the First Division.

But Plumstead was out on a limb and attendances never matched those of northern rivals. By 1910 Woolwich Arsenal were broke and relegated. Salvation came in the form of Fulham chairman and property developer Sir Henry Norris, who bought the club. His plan to merge Arsenal and Fulham failed, so he decided to move Woolwich Arsenal north of the Thames to tap into the bigger gates of inner London.

The move was as good as sealed when, in 1913, Suffragettes burned down the Manor Ground’s main stand as part of their campaign of arson against male-dominated institutions – Norris himself being a prominent local politician. That summer, the club relocated to Highbury in Islington, leasing the recreation ground of St John’s College of Divinity. They dropped “Woolwich” from the name, becoming simply “The Arsenal” – soon shortened further to “Arsenal” – and opened their new ground in September 1913.

Highbury was redeveloped to the designs of stadium architect Archibald Leitch, and later rebuilt in the 1930s into the marble-halled Art Deco masterpiece that defined Arsenal’s image for decades. By 1919 they were back in the First Division, promoted controversially at Tottenham’s expense – a slight that still fuels the North London derby.

The badge has always drawn from their roots in Woolwich. Early crests featured three cannons viewed from above, barrels pointing north. Later designs simplified to a single, side-facing cannon, wheeled and riveted like those produced at the Royal Arsenal. It’s an unmistakable symbol of the club’s origins in Britain’s foremost munitions works – the same place that armed the fleet, fortified the empire, and pioneered weapons technology for over 200 years.

The cannon’s meaning deepens when you recall what the Royal Arsenal represented: engineering excellence, industrial power, and mass-production skill. The site’s innovations – rifled barrels, smokeless powders, precision-machined shell casings, armour-piercing rounds – were the football equivalent of tactical revolutions, each giving the British military an edge. That same combination of tradition, technology and firepower is what Arsenal have always wanted to project on the pitch.

From a works team on Plumstead Common to Herbert Chapman’s WM formation, to Arsène Wenger’s Invincibles and the Emirates Stadium era, Arsenal have always carried that cannon. It’s there on the blazer badge Charlie Nicholas once called “class”. It’s stitched in gold above marble halls Jimmy Greaves grudgingly admired. It’s a constant in a club that’s moved across a city, changed its name, survived fires, bankruptcies and relocations, but never forgotten that it was born in a place where power was forged in steel, brass and cordite.

That’s why Arsenal are the Gunners. Not just because of what they’ve won, but because of where they came from – and the badge tells you the whole story.

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