A NEW book on the history of Colwyn Bay Football Club has been published.
Written by long standing supporter and football historian Arthur Holden, GROUNDS FOR HOPE chronicles Colwyn Bay Football Club Town & People from the club’s formation in 1881 to the present day.
Colwyn Bay Football Club has existed since 1881, representing what was then a tiny hamlet, in a hilly, rural landscape, consisting of a small number of properties, clustered near an insignificant railway halt on the North Wales coast.
The town’s rapid development and expansion since then has defined the history of its football club. As Colwyn Bay grew so the club was forced to repeatedly seek pastures new on which to play football.
Via its moves to eleven different grounds, the football club is the vehicle upon which we travel through time and learn about the football club’s, and some of the area’s major occurrences, developments and characters.
The town of Colwyn Bay, has had various stresses and strains put upon it over the years, the most recent being its decline as a tourist, retail and business centre.
All related to the opening of the A55 dual carriageway in the mid-1980s, which spliced through the town. Now easily bypassed and separated from its main asset (a glorious beach), by the A55, Colwyn Bay has struggled to find a role for itself and has withered from being the pleasant, vibrant, elegant, and thriving town it once was.
But, as the story of its football club will bear testament to, despite repeated setbacks, so far as the future of Colwyn Bay town, its football club and people are concerned, there most certainly are ‘Grounds For Hope’.
