THE CRAY FOOTBALL CLUB - 1860 to 2010
By Trevor Mulligan

It was Queen Victoria's 23rd year of an impressive 64-year reign of Great Britain and its Empire. Charles Dickens was an established novelist and short story writer, and the Crimean War (October 1853 to February 1856) – which made the 'Lady of the Lamp' nurse, Florence Nightingale, a household name and national heroine – had raged to a conclusion just four years earlier.

The year was 1860, and the builders of the London to Dover railway route across the Cray Valley joined with the villagers of St Mary Cray, to form an association football team that we now know as Cray Wanderers.

The suffix of 'Wanderers' to the village team name didn't occur until several years after the formation of the Club, when local lad, Arthur 'Bowser' Price, likened the Cray team to 'a bunch of wanderers'.

The earliest-known kit colour of Cray was chocolate, presumably because fabric dyes in the mid-19th century were very limited, and it is for this reason that this website has been re-liveried in this 150th anniversary year to include the colour of chocolate. This change will last for the whole of 2010, although references to the Club's nickname will stay faithful to the present-day 'Wands' and not their Victorian alternative of the 'Chocolates'.

Happy birthday, Cray!