St Bernard's F.C.
| Full name | St Bernard's Football Club |
|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | St Bernard |
| Founded | 1874 as Third Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers |
| Dissolved | 1943 |
| Ground |
The Meadows, Edinburgh Powburn Park, Edinburgh John Hope's Park, Edinburgh Royal Gymnasium Ground, Edinburgh New Powderhall, Edinburgh New Logie Green, Edinburgh Old Logie Green, Edinburgh |
St Bernard's Football Club were a football club based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The club was established in 1878 and joined the Scottish Football League. They played at several different grounds before making the Royal Gymnasium Ground their long-term home. However, after having to sell it in 1943, the club was dissolved.
The club was originally the Third Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers —like Third Lanark, it was a team linked to the territorial movement of the Victorian era— who had been inspired to set up a football team after watching an exhibition match between Queen's Park and Clydesdale. Buying a ball at Percival King's sports shop in Lothian Street, they formed a club at the British League of Abstainers' office in February 1874.
Originally the club played at The Meadows along with Heart of Midlothian and later also Hibernian, before moving to their own ground, firstly at Powburn Park in Newington and then to John Hope's Park in , where its close proximity to the then playing fields of Edinburgh Academy helped them gain a following. Those in charge of the Third Edinburgh Rifle Volunteers began to see the club as a distraction, and this resulted in the club divorcing itself from the regiment in 1878, as James Dunn and George Heathcote rechristened the club "St Bernard's" (with an apostrophe) after the famous St Bernard's Well sitting on the banks of the Water of Leith nearby, and which formed the badge of the club.
In 1880 the club transferred to the grounds of the Royal Patent Gymnasium Grounds, affectionately known as the 'Gymmie'. First built in 1864 to cater for the growing Victorian passion for healthy recreation, the Gymnasium's centrepiece was a giant rotary boat seating up to 60 rowers, although it also provided equipment for stilts, quoits and bowls, and even ice-skating in winter.
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