The Southend United FC History Group

The Southend United FC History Group was formed in 2025 by the Shrimpers Trust with the principal aim of protecting and making our club’s history and heritage accessible to all.

We meet regularly and publish our minutes on the Trust and club websites. The Group reports directly to the Trust Board, and its members are drawn from within the Trust, each bringing skills and a passion for Southend United’s history

Achievements to date include:

• Published a book, ‘Roots & All’, which contains a variety of stories from fans covering experiences from the late 1940’s to date.
• Undertook a cultural history project which explores the diversity of players that have worn our club shirt. A Sporting Heritage grant was secured to help fund the work and the project was nominated in the ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’ category for the 2025 Football Content Awards.
• Provided a series of iconic match prints to the club for the Executive Box corridor and working with the club on Executive Box naming.
• Facilitated a process which ended with the club purchasing two special paintings by artist Keith Bird depicting matches against Liverpool in 1979 and Manchester United in 2006.
• Initiated a series of stories about past players deep in to our club past and which can be accessed via a link under this History Group tab.
• Commenced cataloguing of memorabilia held.
• Made available to local community groups a presentation on club history.

We’ve made a strong start, but this is just the beginning – there’s much more to do!

Current projects underway, or identified as tasks to commence, include building a match programme collection, restoration of club memorabilia, the possibility of making available club trophies for future events, and the launch in conjunction with the club of a legacy numbers project which celebrates every one of our first team players since we were founded back in 1906.

Our ultimate goal is to establish a museum at Roots Hall, bringing the history of Southend United to life for everyone. This will form part of the club’s planned redevelopment, but even before then we aim to deliver positive results. This page will be updated regularly to reflect what has happened.

The work we do is undertaken by unpaid volunteers in their spare time. Some projects incur expenses, so the Southend United Ex-Players Association (SUEPA) have set up a dedicated ‘SUEPA Fund’ within the Shrimpers Trust accounts to support history and heritage work. The Fund relies mainly on fundraising from SUEPA events, but donations can also be made via the ‘donate now’ link at the top of this page.

We seek to publicise the work that we do online via SUEPA social media on Facebook, X, LinkedIn and Instagram.

You can explore our work to date via the links below:

These links will be extended as our work progresses.

We welcome stories, photos, or even just your memories – every contribution helps us build the bigger picture

Any ideas of subjects that you would like to see us tackle, or indeed wish to offer your help to progress what we do, please contact us by email at: suepa@shrimperstrust.co.uk

Andy Leeder
Chairman of the Southend United FC History Group

Page updated: September 2025