The Terraces
The ink — every line and halftone dot holds at full size

The Match Bill

The First Wembley Programme, 1923

The programme of the White Horse Final — sold to a crowd that could not open its arms to read it.

Work
match programme, 28 April 1923
Maker
programme printers for the Empire Stadium
Date
1923
Ground
Wembley
The crowd
126,047
Era
The interwar game · 1919–1930
Source
The Football Association, 1923 · Wikimedia Commons

Period crests or marks appear inside this historic work. They are reproduced solely as part of the historical document, under the house’s historical-document doctrine — nothing modern is used or sold.

The ephemera outlived the emergency.

This form has a living descendant: set your own date as a fixture bill →

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

The programme printed for the first Wembley final — Bolton Wanderers against West Ham United, 28 April 1923 — and sold, optimistically, to a crowd of a hundred and twenty-six thousand so tightly packed that opening one was an achievement. The cover carries the Empire Stadium in its first spring, the twin towers barely dry. Most copies were pulped underfoot that afternoon, which is why a survivor reads like a relic of the day itself: the team sheets, the advertisements, the kick-off hour of a match that famously started forty-five minutes late. The ephemera outlived the emergency.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

The First Wembley Programme, 1923, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The First Wembley Programme, 1923 framed on the wall
The First Wembley Programme, 1923 framed on the wall
The First Wembley Programme, 1923 framed on the wall
The First Wembley Programme, 1923 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A reproduction of match programme, 28 April 1923 — programme printers for the Empire Stadium, 1923 — from the copy held by The Football Association, 1923 · Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
  • Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
  • Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
  • Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
  • Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
  • If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same collection

A Letterpress Fixture Bill — letterpress fixture bill, jobbing printers, c. 1910

jobbing printers · c. 1910

A Letterpress Fixture Bill

Saturday, set in wood type: the kick-off hour, the admission price, the exclamation points earned.

Kick-off is the oldest deadline that makes people happy.
Grand Match de Football, 21 November 1921 — letterpress match bill, 21 November 1921, Jobbing printer, Sarreguemines, 1921

Jobbing printer, Sarreguemines · 1921

Grand Match de Football, 21 November 1921

A jobbing-printer match bill from the Moselle, at nearly thirteen thousand pixels.

A poster is a hierarchy of shouts, well arranged.