Harrogate Town FC

The Sulphurites? And why on earth are @HarrogateTown called that? All is revealed in our historical scouting report below 👇 - So #LetsGetTheBadgeIn...

Initially formed in June 1914, the club was immediately put on the back burner as WWI broke out and the men of Harrogate formed one of Lord Kitchener's (the man with the moustache on the posters pointing out and saying "Your country needs you") Pals Battalions. The idea was that men would be more willing to volunteer for the army if they could serve alongside their family, friends, and colleagues. This they did. In droves.

The downside was that when that particular battalion saw action and suffered heavy losses, whole villages and towns in Britain could lose all their fighting-age men in just a couple of hours. The "Harrogate Terriers", as the 15th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment were known, saw action at the Somme and Passchendaele. The British Army suffered 60,000 casualties on the first morning of the Somme – the men of Harrogate were in the thick of it.

We can excuse them, then, for waiting until 1919 to officially get the football club formed – which went by the name of Harrogate Hotspurs initially.

The town is just north of Leeds and is situated amongst some of England's most beautiful countryside: the Yorkshire Dales National Park, Nidderdale National Landscape, and the incredibly sculptured Royal Horticultural Society’s Garden Harlow Carr. (If you've never been to an RHS garden – do so – they're something every Briton should be proud of.)

In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was discovered that the natural spa waters emerging from the nearby rocks contained high levels of iron and sulphur. Word spread, and Harrogate became a Georgian-era tourist hotspot, with the nation's well-to-do retiring there for weeks at a time to soak up the waters for their supposed health benefits. Hotels and homes sprang up and the economy grew. The town's motto is Arx celebris fontibus – which simply means "Citadel famous for its springs", which it is. The team's nickname to this day is the Sulphurites, owing to their famous waters.

To keep tourists coming even during the cold Yorkshire winters, they built the Winter Gardens – a sort of glasshouse – so that visitors could relax and stroll in any weather. During the 1920s, people could unwind here, amid potted palms, listening to music from a grand piano. In the 1930s, the Municipal Orchestra played every morning throughout the year, with free admission for the patients of the baths.

Today it is a Wetherspoons. Make of that what you will. But fair play to them, to be honest – there are countless beautiful old buildings across the country that may well have been converted into flats if not for the pub chain. In some respects, they do more to preserve our high streets than the government.

Let’s actually get to the badge, then:

It is a smart design, with the H and the T of Harrogate Town intertwined neatly, giving good symmetry. It was adopted in 2017 as part of a rebrand. In the centre of the badge sits the White Rose of Yorkshire, as you’ll also see in the badges of Leeds, Halifax, Sheffield United, and many others.

For those that weren’t paying attention in Year 8 History: The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) were a series of English civil wars between the rival houses of Lancaster (red rose) and York (white rose) for control of the throne. It was all pretty bloody, with people swapping sides the whole time and many pointless slaughters. George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones, famously based many of his storylines on episodes from the Wars of the Roses (sans the dragons).

The wars finally ended in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth, where Henry Tudor of Lancaster defeated Richard III of York (who was later buried beneath a car park in Leicester). Henry became Henry VII and merged the white and red roses to form the Tudor rose. There you go – History 101.

As for the actual club, they claimed the Northern Premier League Division One title in 2001–02 and were among the founding members of the Conference North in 2004. After winning the National League North play-offs in 2018, they earned a historic first promotion to the Football League with victory in the 2020 National League play-off final. They also lifted the 2019–20 FA Trophy by defeating Concord Rangers.

So there we have them – Harrogate Town of League Two. They pack a noble tradition of beauty, baths, and battalions. There’s little more English than that.