Ebbsfleet United FC Official Website

ABOVE: The Northfleet side which won three Kent Senior Cups, pictured in 1909-10.
(photo courtesy: Paul Harrison)

The seeds of present-day Ebbsfleet United Football Club were sown at a time when Queen Victoria sat on the throne, the British Empire stretched far and wide across the globe, Lord Salisbury and William Gladstone were slugging it out at the polls and East London was still reeling from the killings of Jack the Ripper.

Northfleet Invicta was originally a cricket club but its teenaged members transformed it into a football club in November 1890, among their number being one Joe Lingham, later a player and chairman who would be linked with the Northfleet club until his death 53 years later. In 1892, Invicta was dropped from the name and the club joined the Kent League in 1895-96, winning the championship and the first of a string of Kent Senior Cups at the first attempt.

Meanwhile in Gravesend, a senior team formed by a merger in 1893 of Gravesend FC and Gravesend Ormonde to become Gravesend United, had also entered the Kent League as founder members.

During these formative years, a host of grounds were used, with Northfleet United playing at places including what is now Blue Circle Cement Factory, the Six Bells on Old Perry Street and at Collins Meadow (now Huntley Avenue). Gravesend United regularly used two grounds, one at the Overcliffe close to what is now St James Avenue, and another on the site of Gravesend Grammar School for Girls in Pelham Road.

Both sides soon found themselves in financial difficulties following their entry to the Southern League in 1896. An amalagamation of the two clubs was proposed by Gravesend in 1898 who considered competition with Northfleet as financial suicide, but the latter club rejected the idea. Later that year, however, Northfleet's directors disbanded the club in disgust following an attendance of only 400 at a match against Dartford.

Despite half the Northfleet board now having jumped ship to Gravesend, the club continued to struggle as few Northfleet supporters were prepared to transfer their allegiance to Gravesend. However, Gravesend did secure the Kent Senior Cup in 1898 and 1900, while also beating Tottenham in a Southern League game in the same season that the London side became the only non-league side to ever win the FA Cup. But generally things were on the slide for Gravesend, and after five seasons in the Southern League, they withdrew to the Kent League once again. The club limped on until 1913-14 and the Great War interrupted proceedings, and did not resume playing until 1932-33 as humble members of the Kent Amateur League, having lost their ground to redevelopment.

Northfleet United, meanwhile, were gaining momentum. After their slide into debt and disarray at the turn of the century, Joe Lingham had discharged their debts in 1901 and they resumed life in the West Kent League. By 1907 they were back in the Kent League and on their way to three successive championships.

Even the turmoil of the First World War failed to hold them back, with seven more Kent League titles amassed in the inter-war years, and a record five Kent Senior Cups in succession. Northfleet's superiority was assured by an agreement to become Tottenham's 'nursery club', blooding their promising youngsters in competitive games which yielded the Kent Senior Cup in 1938 and the Kent League in 1939. But Northfleet's progress was checked by the coming of the Second World War, leaving Gravesend United as the only active football side in the borough and they picked up the Kent Senior Cup in a weakened field of teams in 1944.

Gravesend United emerged from the war as active members of the Kent League in 1945-46, still playing at their Central Avenue ground, but Lingham's death in 1943 had left a hole at Northfleet United that was never filled. The solution - with a relatively successful Gravesend side, and a decent stadium belonging to Northfleet - appeared to be a joining together of the two clubs after almost 60 years of rivalry...

(Adapted from the Golden Jubilee Year Book by Paul Harrison)