As many GNE fans will know, the club is celebrating a truly special and unique anniversary this season, marking 125 years since our promotion to the old First Division, in the 1899-1900 season! An anniversary shared with none other than Manchester City! As City were promoted as champions in the same season, with GNE promoted as runners-up.

Glossop remains the smallest town in England to ever have had a team playing in the top flight of English football, a truly unique honour for our town and club.

Sir Samuel Hill Hill-Wood, 1st Baronet (21 March 1872 – 4 January 1949) was a British businessman, Conservative politician, cricketer and football club chairman. Wood was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, the son of Samuel Wood, a cotton manufacturer and his wife Annie.

Samuel Hill Wood was educated at Eton College and was a keen sportsman. He continued to run the cotton business. Wood made his cricket debut for Derbyshire in the 1894 season, and became their captain in the 1899 season for three seasons. Wood was chairman and owner of Glossop North End funding it up until World War I. His expenditure was estimated to be more than £30,000 at that time. His efforts and enthusiasm led to the club being included in the enlarged Football League Second Division in 1898. He scoured the country for professional footballers and after only one season Glossop qualified as Second Division runners up and were promoted to the First Division. They were relegated after a season and by 1914. Hill Wood severed his connection and Glossop later resigned from the Football League.

In 1910, Hill Wood was elected MP for High Peak, holding the seat until 1929. He changed his name to Hill-Wood by royal licence in 1912. In the First World War, he served in the Cheshire Regiment reaching the rank of Major. Announced in the 1921 New Year Honours, he was created a baronet on 25 January 1921. In 1929, after leaving parliament, he succeeded the disgraced Henry Norris as chairman of Arsenal, and presided over the club during its first period of success in the 1930s. He stepped down in 1936 but returned to the club after the Second World War, holding the post until his death in Westminster in 1949.

Denis Hill-Wood was the third son of Sir Samuel Hill-Wood, 1st Baronet, who was chairman of Arsenal for twenty years, as well as a first-class cricketer for Derbyshire. During the Second World War he served with the Royal Armoured Corps and was wounded in Libya.

With other officers he was awarded the Military Cross 1943 & in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in the Middle East. Denis became chairman of Arsenal football club in 1962, a job which he held until his death in 1982. A bust of Hill-Wood was commissioned and used to stand inside the Directors Landing of the East Stand of Arsenal’s Highbury stadium, and now stands in the Directors Entrance of the Emirates Stadium after Arsenal’;s move there.

Denis’s son, Peter Hill-Wood, served in the Coldstream Guards. After leaving the Guards, Hill-Wood entered the banking industry, eventually rising to become a vice-chairman of Hambros Bank. Peter succeeded his father as chairman of Arsenal after the latter’s death in 1982. Hill-Wood sold much of his family holdings in the club to former vice-chairman David Dein in the 1980s and 1990s and the rest to Stan Kroenke. On 14 June 2013 Hill-Wood stepped down as chairman. He died aged 82 on 28 December 2018.

On Saturday 12th July, a special Blue Plaque will be unveiled at GNE, in commemoration to Sir Samuel Hill-Wood, marking a truly significant historical day that will stay in the GNE history books forever. The Blue Plaque will be mounted on the side of the GNE clubhouse for all the public to see.

Plenty of special guests are expected to be in attendance on the day, including the High Peak Mayor, local councilors, Members of Parliament, amongst others. The club will soon be distributing invitations for this truly special unveiling.

As previously mentioned, Sir Samuel Hill-Wood bank rolled the club during its one & only season in the top flight. Following the ceremony, and on the afternoon of Saturday 12th July, GNE shall present a truly top flight friendly fixture, which promises to be the biggest game held in SK13 in the last decade. Keep your eye's peeled for more details!