Hatters Heritage (Charity No. 1183061)
50 Half Moon Lane, Dunstable, Beds LU5 4AB
Trustees Report 3rd January 2026
Trustees
Roger Wash - Chairman
David Cockfield
William Foster (appointed 8th July 2024)
Philippe Hucklesby – Secretary up to 18th July 2025
Ollie Kay (appointed 8th July 2024)
Andy King
John Kingham - Treasurer
Michael McMahon
Chris Stokes (appointed 8th July 2024) Secretary from 19th July 2025
Brian Webb
Graham Winterbone (appointed 5th November 2024)
Background and History
Hatters Heritage arose as a result of the life-long passion, inspiration and endeavour of the founder and chairman of this Charity – Roger Wash, who over more than fifty years accumulated a vast array of memorabilia, data and stories appertaining to Luton Town FC and covering the whole period since the Club’s inception in 1885.
The inaugural annual general meeting of Hatters Heritage as an Unincorporated Association was held on 18th April 2018.
On 23rd April 2019 registration as a CIO Foundation Charity was approved by the Charity Commission and on 10th October 2019 Hatters Heritage adopted that status.
Membership is open to anyone interested in the preservation and appreciation of the heritage and history of Luton Town Football Club. The trustees oversee the day to day running of the Charity and are recruited from the ranks of participating members of the Charity. The trustees seek the views of members, in deciding the activities to be run.
Progress to date
With the help of funding from NHLF, we developed and launched in November 2020 what is becoming the most detailed and comprehensive free to use football related heritage website in the UK.
Progress towards the achievement of this goal, carried out by a trained team of twenty volunteers is already impressive: We have now completed the digitising of match reports of every game since 1885, every page of every match programme in our collection and thousands of match action photographs. We have also added photos and profiles of every player who has made a first team appearance since 1885 plus many videos of match action and items of memorabilia together with numerous features.
In June 2022 a small band of volunteers set about sorting through the 1.5 million glass plates and negatives donated by ‘Luton News’ to the Wardown Museum in Luton. We have now completed this task and have identified and digitised over 72000 photographs relating to Luton Town FC.
In order to keep the team together we have now just completed a project to photograph match reports and photos from the various bound volumes of local newspapers housed in three locations around Luton. This particular project was felt necessary as it gives us far better quality reports which are easier to read.
The overall project has also been successful in reaching out to different audiences and enabled hundreds of people to engage with the heritage of Luton Town Football Club during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. Membership of Hatters’ Heritage is rising, 50,000 people follow the charity on social media and altogether forty volunteers are active in various roles on its behalf. The ‘Family Roadshows’ and the online ‘Hatters’ Tales’ project, have demonstrated a commitment to develop participatory activity for the club’s supporters in general and the society’s members in particular. The trustees are fully committed to engaging with its supporters and audiences into the future when it will be possible to make greater use of the dozen touring exhibition panels designed as part of the project.
Communication with audiences, volunteers and other stakeholders has been maintained and established through newsletters, e-mail distribution and the local press and media. An excellent working relationship has been established with a number of partners, most notably Luton Town FC. The club has been willing to promote the work of Hatters’ Heritage throughout, issuing marketing materials via an e-mail distribution list to almost 90,000 supporters worldwide.
To enable the project to digitise the complete collection, the working practices of the board of trustees and the management of volunteers has been crucial. To this end, during the project, individual board members have taken on discrete roles, sub-committees have been formed and the Chairman has taken on an executive role, the better to oversee and manage the multiplicity of tasks now associated
with the future wellbeing of the project. Trustee roles now include – web oversight, social media, safeguarding, financial development, marketing and volunteer support.
Moving forward a number of projects are underway:- profiles of all managers, staff and directors of the club through the ages, the transcribing of diaries written by a previous club secretary during the club’s pioneering trips behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ during the 1950’s, making the statistical information currently on the website multi-faceted and extending the number of ground tours of Kenilworth Road which produce income for the Hatters’ Heritage charity as well as another relevant Luton charity.
We will then move on to the proposed Heritage Centre, which will be under our stewardship, at the club’s new ground at Power Court and which will be completed by 2028.
RW/JK 03/01/2026
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