Fareham Town FC

Situated between Southampton and Portsmouth on the English south coast – upstream of a creek (Fareham Creek) – this town could not have anything but a rich heritage given its location.

The football team is also proving itself to have some deep wells of support in the local area – in the Isthmian League South Central so far this year they have the third highest attendance – this is despite a slightly rocky start to the season.

Their badge immediately drew my attention on Twitter because of the two red roses sitting either side of the crossed keys and sword. Red roses are usually seen ‘up north’ in Lancashire – Southampton FC have a white rose embedded in their badge – so how did a red rose, two in fact, get onto the south coast? Well, there is an easy answer for one – and an interesting connection for the other.

So, without further ado, let’s do the #Creeksiders the honour and #GetTheBadgeIn – because they have a beauty based on the town’s coat of arms.

Let’s start with that ship.

As you would expect, Fareham has long had a strong maritime connection. In medieval times, ships loaded with Hampshire grain sailed to France and returned with wine. Imports such as coal, salt, and hides arrived at Fareham’s quays, while exports included timber, leather, bricks, pottery, and grain.

In the late 18th century, shipbuilding thrived in Fareham – and while smaller boats were, and still are, constructed at Fareham – its role was mostly to ship out the vast amounts of timber needed for the Royal Navy, building its ships during the 18th and 19th centuries in Portsmouth. Fareham sits in the middle of some large forests and estates, making it an excellent source of this vital ingredient that powered Britain’s rise.

The town today boasts some beautiful Georgian architecture and houses built at around the same time as the top brass of the Royal Navy and their families moved into the area – far enough away from the busy dockyards to be idyllic but close enough to oversee operations.

The ship in gold is striking against the black background. According to the Fareham Town Council website, that is by design, as the black itself has deep-rooted meanings. Fareham has notched up some impressive industrial innovations in its time, and this black, the colour of coal and industry, is meant to represent that.

In the 1780s Henry Cort introduced a new method of smelting iron, known, funnily enough, today as the Cort process. He found that by taking low-quality and ‘crumbly’ pig iron and placing it into a coal-fired ‘reverberatory furnace’ (which means the fuel is burnt in one chamber which heats the roof of the chamber in which the metal is placed) you could turn it into wrought iron. Wrought iron was of high quality and could be fashioned into railway tracks or used for shipbuilding.

However, the story goes a bit deeper. Cort, while responsible for introducing the process to England, did not actually invent it himself (despite holding the patent). He learned of the method from his cousin, who traded with the slave island of Jamaica. There, a group of black metalworkers had devised this new method, which Cort’s cousin witnessed when visiting the island.

So, thanks to Cort – and those innovative Jamaican slaves – Fareham was able to keep up with the changes in shipbuilding and once again become the source of the Royal Navy’s essential materials, from timber to iron.

However, Fareham’s exports and innovations did not stop there and were not confined to developing for export either. Looking inward, the new building boom triggered by the Industrial Revolution required large amounts of bricks. Again, to the rescue came Fareham.

Bursledon brickworks and others in the area took advantage of the area’s naturally high-quality clay and began producing en masse. There was plenty of clay at the new Bursledon site, along with excellent transport links by rail and river.

At first, the clay was dug by hand from deep pits, some nearly 40 feet deep, located close to the factory. It was then moved using small railway wagons. As the nearest pits were exhausted and the digging moved further away, this method became less practical. In the 1930s, mechanical diggers were introduced, and eventually, the clay was transported to the works by an overhead cable system from more distant pits.

The bricks made from the local clay soon became known as ‘Fareham red brick’ and were used in many buildings – notably, the Royal Albert Hall in London was built with them and still retains its iconic Fareham red brick look today.

Moving up in the badge, we have the crossed keys and sword. This represents the church that sits at the centre of Fareham – the Church of St Peter and St Paul. St Peter is often referred to with the symbols of the crossed keys (which is why so many pubs are called that too), as he was the holder of the keys of Heaven. St Paul, who wrote much of the Bible, is historically referred to as the sword of Christ – but in his case, his ‘sword’ was his pen. The crossed keys and sword symbolism crops up a lot in England and is also on the school badge of Cranleigh private school in Surrey, which is not a million miles away from Fareham and has its own church of the same name.

So then, finally, to the red roses which sparked my interest in the first place…

The red roses are indeed those of Lancaster – but in a rather roundabout way. Hampshire also has the red rose symbol on its flag because it is connected through John of Gaunt to Lancaster. John was the fourth son of Edward III and rose to become one of the most powerful men in England (but never king). He was titled ‘Duke of Lancaster’ and was the OG ‘Lancastrian’ (one of the houses that would tear England apart during the Wars of the Roses). However, despite holding significant lands in the north, he also held estates in Hampshire – hence the red rose also appearing down south.

So, there you have it.

Warships, iron, red bricks, and red roses – the powerhouse behind the Royal Navy and the Industrial Revolution.

There’s a lot going on with these #Creeksiders.