A band of four young men, Jack Hughes, Walter Price, Billy Mason and Billy Scattergood, who were connected through the Aston Villa Wesleyan Chapel, Lozells on the Aston side of Birmingham, formed the club in March 1874. 

Among the activities of the Wesleyan Chapel was a flourishing cricket club, and it was Hughes, Price, Mason and Scattergood who, as members of the cricket side, wandered back from a football match and mused about the desirability of forming their own football club. 

Tradition has it that this initial meeting of minds took place under a gas-lit lamp post on Heathfield Road, Handsworth and soon the four had co-opted the experienced heads running the chapel and cricket team to help them establish their new club.

C H Midgley was appointed the club’s first secretary, who duly extracted the first membership fees of one shilling from those present, and H H Hartshorne was appointed as the club’s first President, having cut his teeth as president of the chapel’s bible class.

The founders’ ambitions were limited in scope at first, being content with playing football - then a comparatively new game in England, although Scotland had developed it into a national pastime -  on a piece of waste ground at Aston Park.

As for the founders themselves, Billy Mason was later appointed as Villa’s honorary secretary soon after formation in May 1874 and would represent Villa in professional football in 1879, Walter Price became Villa’s second captain after half back George Matthews, whilst ‘keeper Billy Scattergood kept goal in Villa’s first two recorded games and forward Jack Hughes played in both fixtures, scoring once.

From those rough and random conditions, the new flock progressed quickly, and this band of brothers, often quite literally, built Villa’s first ever squad in 1875 with names like Boyle, Brittain, Davies, Finnemore, Froggatt, Greaves, Griffiths, Higgs, Kennedy, Lewis, Page, Pank and Tye. 

Of those, however, Tommy Pank would represent Villa in the FA Cup between 1879 and 1882, making 11 appearances.

Villa’s first recorded game came in January 1875 against local rivals Aston Park Unity, where, in an era before professionalisation or strict rules, the Villa made full use of their available squad:

GK | Billy Scattergood (Founder)
HB | George Matthews (Villa’s first captain)
HB | Harold Matthews
HB | Charles Midgley
HB | Ted Lee (Represented Villa in professional football)
B | William Weiss
B | Walter Price (Villa’s second captain)
F | Billy Mason (Represented Villa in professional football)
F | Jack Hughes (Founder)
F | Alfred Robbins
F Lewis
S McBenn
T Smith
A Walters

Ted Lee and Billy Mason would both go on to represent Villa in professional competition, making 12 and 2 FA Cup appearances respectively between 1879-80 and 1882-83, with Billy scoring a brace on debut against Stafford Road on Saturday, 24 January 1880.

Villa’s second game, before the constitution of a proper ‘season’ of fixtures, took place shortly after against Aston Brook St. Mary’s Rugby Club on 13 March 1875, with Villa winning 1-0 courtesy of a strike that fittingly came from Villa founder Jack Hughes.

Again, Villa made full use of their nascent squad with 15 players per side used whilst Rugby rules were used for the first half and football rules for the second.

GK | Billy Scattergood (Founder)
B | Walter Price (Villa’s second captain)
B | Fred Knight
B | William Weiss
HB | Ted Lee (Represented Villa in professional football)
HB | George Matthews (Villa’s first captain)
HB | Harold Matthews
HB | Charles Midgley
F | Jack Hughes (Founder) (He scored the only goal in the match)
F | Billy Mason (Represented Villa in professional football)
F | Alfred Robbins
F | William Sothers
F | William Such
F | Harry Whateley
F | George Page

Just as it sounded, the club came into being in a quite casual way, and for some time, the members were content to kick a ball about on various pieces of waste ground in the neighbourhood. However, fate would change the course of destiny.

Villa soon realised that waste ground was an insufficient foundation for their ambitions, and so the search commenced for an appropriate location upon which Villa could create a base. 

A field in Wellington Road, Perry Barr was decided upon as a result of a Sunday morning scouting exhibition and not without some misgivings, the officials, pledged themselves to the landlord to find £5 in rent for the first season. 

The field featured a hayrick in the middle, a pool not far away, a hill near one of the proposed goals and a row of trees overhanging the touchline.

Despite the issues, realising the increasing profile of the club that was making innovative use of his pasture, the following year their butcher landlord demanded, and got, £8, and during the succeeding seasons as the fortunes of Villa improved so were the pockets of the landlord better lined, for the rent advanced by stages until it reached £200 per annum.

Before that however the chance appearance at a match of slim built, dapper George Ramsay, a Scot who had come to work in Birmingham, was to effect a miracle in the destiny of Aston Villa. A young fellow, short of stature but trimly built and firmly knit, Ramsay walked up to the somewhat ramshackle spectacle at Wellington Road and looked upon the attempts at dribbling and shooting of the novices with considerable interest.

This marked the first time that Ramsay had seen his favourite Scottish pastime being played in Birmingham and enthused he asked permission to be allowed to join in. Speedily, Ramsay, gave those present an object lesson in the art of dribbling, something the like of which they had never seen before.

Indeed playing for the nascent Villa team, the way Ramsay dribbled the ball stamped him as a football artist above the ordinary in a manner his team mates had never seen. He had the ball so completely under his control that it seemed almost impossible to tackle him and such was their captivation at this mini marvel’s footballing dexterity that they immediately asked him to joined their club.

George threw in his lot with his new friends - and the club was on the first rung to fame. 

Such was their adulation for their new member that the club immediately compelled George to take over the captaincy from team skipper Walter Price - one of the four founder members of Villa who in turn had replaced George Matthews.

Ramsay’s vision as captain moulded Villa’s style of play with short quick passing the focus and as a result the club’s advancement was rapid.

Initially however, despite Villa’s hopes, Wellington Road was a rare destination for supporters - indeed during one of the early matches there was a crowd of just two to witness a game. That they were William McGregor - Villa’s first Chairman and founder of the Football League - and George Ramsay’s brother, it was nevertheless a very special crowd indeed. 

By the time Villa’s early landlord had multiplied Villa’s rent by a factor of 40, the club was barely concerned given they were now comfortably ‘in the money’. For Villa, in their first football league season in 1888-89 took over £1,000 in gate money having opened their first grandstand at Wellington Road on October 22nd 1887, the season in which Villa adopted the famous claret and blue for the first time. A far cry from their first official gate of 5/3d.

Whilst at Perry Barr Villa used The Old Crown & Cushion public house as their headquarters and it was from there in 1877 that McGregor had overseen much of the changes to the nascent club that are still with us today including the the Lion badge and the ‘Prepared’ motto.

McGregor’s ambitions for Villa however extended beyond simple custodianship of the club and he set about his latest venture - the establishment of a national Football League of which his club Villa became founder members having paid their joining fee of two guineas. McGregor’s ambitions came to fruition on 17 April 1888 as the first ever professional league was inaugurated.

By that point however the ‘greedy’ farmer had long since been seen as the purveyor of an uneconomical arrangement for the club and Villa struck out with plans for a stadium of their own in the spiritual home of Aston Lower Grounds; the stadium, from the very first, was intended to be a major statement from what was the single most successful club of the era - having already won three FA Cups and three League Championships including the double before moving in - and was, and remained famous worldwide as one of the most palatial of all football grounds. 

Finally opening on 17 April 1897, the driving force behind Villa Park had been Fred Rinder who had become a director of the club in 1894 and won a reputation as one of the most able administrators in world football, later acquiring the freehold of the land for Villa and setting the club on the course to financial security. 

Before then however, and ahead of the professionalisation of football in England - something which was legalised in England in the summer of 1885 following agitation from the Lancashire contingent of clubs - Villa continued to play largely local based matches centred around the Birmingham Senior Cup and local ‘friendlies’ however Villa’s Scottish contingent did arrange a game with the famed Queen’s Park but even their second string proved too strong for an English side a long way behind in their football development.

That was all to change however and before the century was out it was Villa, and English football, who became the pre-eminent exponents of the game. 

Indeed the hard work started by those four boys and supercharged by the arrivals of Ramsay and McGregor created a football club like no other.

Ramsay would go on serve Villa for 59 years, masterminding an unparalleled period of success and creating the template by which the club would forever be known. Protégés of Ramsay were legion and a dynasty of Villa players turned club administrators served the club with a lineage that was directly traceable back to that fateful 1876 day at Wellington Road when a stranger ambled in.