The earliest days of Tottenham Hotspur FC are revealed in a remarkable hand-written ledger coming up at auction in a November 4-5 London sale.
This 156-page Minute Book dating from 1885-96 covers a range of meetings starting just three years after a football club was formed by boys from Hotspur Cricket Club and St John’s Presbyterian local grammar school.
The first name used was Hotspur FC, after the Duke of Northumberland’s son Henry Percy (1364-1403), who went by the nickname ‘Harry Hotspur’ and whose fearless heroics it was hoped would symbolise the character of the club.