Otley Athletic Club

1910 – Reproduced by kind permission of Otley Museum.

2010 – click on each photograph to enlarge

Although Otley A.C. was formed as late as 1983, a previous running club existed in Otley some time earlier and the top photograph is of some its members in the late Edwardian era.

OAC’s Nick Hodgkinson reports,

“The last Committee meeting (that I attended) was held at the White Swan on Boroughgate and I was reminded of a photograph (now reproduced above) that I had seen a few years ago showing Otley Harriers outside the same pub in 1910. I have since obtained a copy from Otley Museum which shows the Otley Harriers team with some of the Committee Members and supporters, circa 1910.

Some say that many of the 1910 Committee Members never made it into the photograph because they could not be dragged out of the pub – nothing changes.

The original photograph in the Library identifies the following people as being in the photograph but there is no way of knowing who is who.

Team
Dobson, Keech, Lawson, Hall, Mitchell, Schultz, Redman, Hodgson, B Davies, Lawton, Fieldhouse, Winfield.

Of the twelve Team members only eight appear to have survived the First World War since regrettably four appear on the First World War Memorial in Otley Parish Church.

Committee and Supporters
J .Whitaker, E Waddington, S Dean, H Waite, L Coupland, C. Robinson, S Lawson, J Hancock, S Baldwin”.

To celebrate the photograph’s Centenary, current club members met at the same venue for a new version of the photograph.

For one of our members, David Hainsworth, there is further poignancy in that his grandfather (on his mother’s side) is in the original photograph – being the young man on the far right of the front row seated (not kneeling).