Keith, I have written a draft of the article which will be accompanied with a photo of the actual programme, the which will appear in a series of Old and Rare programmes in the Nuneaton Griff programme sometime into the new season, send me a personal message with your address and I will send you a copy when it appears.
Below is the first draft.
WITTON SOCIAL
The Magnet Centre in Erdington, Birmingham is a hidden gem, with one toe in the shadow of Spaghetti Junction and the other in the leafy glades of Brookvale Park it consists of a very large Centre building which from a lofty perch looms over a couple of football pitches the which are accessed by way of a rather grand concrete stairway! Next to said stairway is a small section of cover looking slightly incongruous over one corner of a large section of terracing cut into the bank. Inside the Centre building were dressing rooms and showers in the basement with a Social Club, cafeteria and shop above, all built in the early 1920s for the enjoyment of employees of the GEC Witton company which had been based there since 1902. The pitches are still there but the Centre itself is now home to members of the Greek Orthodox Church.
(GEC) Witton Social were formed in 1901 with a pitch next to the factory in what is now Electric Avenue. They were then based at the Magnet Centre from the early 1920s under the patronage of the parent company until 1983 when they moved to Bickenhill Road, Marston Green, former home of Southall’s, Marston Green and Sheldon Promovere, one season later they re-located to the Coleshill Road home of Chelmsley Town near to Birmingham Airport and there they stayed until folding in 1988.
The big question of course is why they left comparative home comforts for the uncertainty of the wider world and as we have found with so many ‘works clubs’ in this series the answer is a take-over of the parent company, in this case the Turbine and Machine side of GEC was bought by C.A. Parsons and the Magnet Centre and sports ground later sold off.
The Football Club spent many years in the old Birmingham Works League with varying success, by the early 1950s they were down in Division Five but fought their way up as far as the Premier and in 1979 joined the Midland Combination as Witton Social (GEC). Again they enjoyed mixed success but after finishing fifth in 1987-88 the struggle to survive proved too much.
The programme shown is from November 1983, a First Round tie in the Fazeley Charity Cup, the only reason I have it was that I worked with the secretary of visitors Hill Top Fleur-De-Lys, a Nuneaton Amateur League side based at the pub by the Arches and who used one of the pitches at the Pingles before the Stadium was developed. Hill Top won the tie and in defence for them was Steve Male who recently helped with the Griff Youth Team and whose son played for it! The programme is very much ‘home produced’ and consists of just twelve pages of which six are blank!
