Lewes FC has been around for 141 years. Ethel Treagus’s association with the club extended well beyond half that timespan. It’s hard to believe there’s anyone, past or present, who had such a deep and long-running affection for the club as Ethel.
Ethel’s devotion to the Rooks began during her childhood, amid the turmoil of the second World War. And it was another horrific event that cemented her love for the club, when in 1947 she was badly injured during the town’s infamous Bonfire parade.
“I was terribly badly burned,” Ethel told David Arnold, in a piece for his Sussex Express column. “I spent a long time in the Queen Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead being treated in the specialist burns unit. I was already a big fan of the Rooks and one thing that really cheered me up were hospital visits by Lewes FC football players such as Norman Wickens and Ben Simmons.”
There were two great loves in Ethel’s life – her family and her football club. The two combined when she met her husband Gordon, a player for the club. The pair had grown up together on the Landport Estate, but it was only when Gordon started playing for Lewes that he caught Ethel’s eye.
“He started out with the 3rd XI and I suddenly saw him in a new light,” Ethel said. “He was so handsome and impressive racing up and down the Dripping Pan. We soon got talking and found we got on really well. Gordon became the love of my life.”
Gordon passed away twenty years ago, but Ethel of course remained loyal to her Rooks. Home or away, Ethel would be a fixture in the stands, so much so that when Henry Muggeridge scored a goal at Brentwood in 2016, it was Ethel he raced over to and planted a kiss on her.
The celebratory smooch was even covered in the Non-League Paper, where Ethel summed up what Henry and the club meant to her. “Henry’s so special,” she told the paper. “They’re all so special – they mean everything to me. The whole club does. Lewes is my life. It has been for as long as I can remember and it has brought me so many happy memories.”
Faltering health meant that Ethel could make fewer of the away trips in her later years, but she remained an ever-present at The Pan, continuing to sell Golden Goal tickets at the top of the Philcox stand well into her 90th year, whatever the weather. Even when struggling to walk, she would insist that she made the journey to see her boys, the ever-accommodating PJ making sure she was chauffeured safely back and forth from her home in the town.
Although she spent many of her final days in hospital, she was still keeping in touch with the club, with her granddaughter Kim ensuring she received copies of the Supporters Club’s magazine to lift her spirits.
Ethel was the very definition of a loyal supporter, someone who loved the club and was loved by everyone at the club in return. There won’t be another like her.