The Lewes FC Supporters Club has been working hard(ish) over the summer, creating an online museum to capture the 139 years of club history. 

Today, we’re throwing open the virtual doors to the first part of our museum, The Programme Archive.

Volunteers have spent the summer collating and scanning men’s and women’s programmes from years gone past, so that these magnificent documents don’t end perishing in people’s lofts. 

We’re hoping to scan one programme from every season the printed programmes were available, and we’ve got enough in the collection to fling open the the doors and let you have a flick through what we’ve done so far. 

The earliest programme we have is from way back in 1947, although we’ll confess this isn’t a Lewes FC game as such, but an FA County Youth Championship game played at The Dripping Pan. The first official Lewes FC programme in our collection is from 1955.

If you have any programmes tucked away in a back bedroom for any of the seasons that we don’t have in our collection, please get in touch (you can reply to this email). We have a particular black spot for men’s programmes in the 1970s (we have most men’s seasons from 1980 onwards, but we haven’t got round to scanning them all in yet) and we could do with more from the early years of the women’s team too. 

The programme archive is only one part of our plans for the museum, which include:

• Photos of teams, trophies and medals from years gone by 
• Tales from the club’s long history
• Profiles of club legends, including players, managers and volunteers
• Stats from men’s and women’s seasons past 

It’s a big job collecting all the information for the museum, so if you fancy getting your hands dusty with the history books, please do get in touch. 

Huge thanks to Richard Turner for his help in scanning programmes this summer, and to Richard Irving and our much missed former chair, Dave Evans, for collating the programmes.