Braintree Town FC,
The Rare Breed Meat Co. Stadium,
off Clockhouse Way,
Braintree,
CM7 3DE

Braintree Town have gone by their current name since 1982, but the club dates back to 1898, when they were founded as the works team of the Crittall Window Company. Known for much of that time as Crittall Athletic, they played in various leagues not only in Essex and East Anglia but also in London.

They joined the Southern League (Southern Division) in 1991, later switching to the Isthmian League, and earned promotion to the Conference South in 2006.

The 2025/26 season will be their ninth in the fifth tier. Their best campaign came in 2015/16 under Danny Cowley, finishing third and reaching the play-off semi-finals, where they lost to Grimsby Town — who went on to beat us in the final.

In recent years, Braintree have found life in the fifth tier tougher, with two relegations, highlighting how much more demanding the National League has become for part-time clubs like the self-proclaimed ‘pub team from Essex’.

FGR and the Iron line up at the start of their most recent fixture at Cressing Road, in February

The fascinating village of Silver End, a few miles south of Braintree, was designed in large part to serve as a living showroom of Crittall Windows, with high quality, modernist housing built for the company’s workers. It also has the largest Village Hall in England and formerly had a three-storey department store, until it burned down. Not bad for a place with a population of under 4,000!  Jonathan Meades, in his TV documentary The Joy of Essex, cited it as one of the numerous types of quasi-utopian communities that have been founded in Essex over the decades.  The big open skies and endless coastline of the county (second in length only to Cornwall among English counties) has long attracted dreamers, and as Ken Walpole noted, “Essex is neither part of East Anglia nor one of the Home Counties; it contains both radical and conservative elements, and is therefore open to all possibilities”.

Incidentally, while the old company football team are hosting us today, Silver End now has its own team, Silver End Utd, who play in Division Two of the Essex and Suffolk Border League, effectively the 13th tier.

Braintree is in Essex, between Chelmsford and Colchester, and is 165 miles from Nailsworth, a journey of about 3 and a 1/2 hours by road.

By Supporters Club Coach – this is by far the cheapest and easiest way to travel. For information about Away Travel, including precise details of pick-up locations – look here. For this match, the departure times are

Stonehouse Brunel Way – 8.45am, Sainsbury’s Dudbridge – 9.00am, The New Lawn – 9.15 am

The prices for coach tickets to this match are as follows (Supporters’ Club members get a £3 discount): Adults £35, U-16 £20, U-11 £10

Book your coach ticket with your match ticket from FGR (a discount for FGR Supporters Club members).

To book a seat with the supporter’s club discount, please call 0333 123 1889  on Monday, Thursday, or Friday at 11am to 2pm.  Please try to book early.

By Car – The address for the Cressing Road ground for sat navs is Braintree, Essex CM7 3DE.  The journey will take a good 3 and a 1/2 hours each way.  There is limited parking at the ground and this fills up early.  However, there is plenty of street parking available, particularly along Stubbs Lane which is the turn off Cressing Road that leads up to the ground.

By Train
Be aware that a rail replacement service is in place between Stroud and Swindon on matchday, which makes the journey to Braintree somewhat over four hours each way. After boarding the train at Swindon, you’ll need to change at London Paddington, switch to the Elizabeth line downstairs, and then change again at Stratford.

Same-day returns are possible, with the last trains from Braintree with connections back to Stroud departing at 6:00pm and 7:00pm sharp.

An adult return without discounts costs around £74, though cheaper options may be available with split ticketing and/or by booking advance fares for parts of the journey.

(Braintree Freeport station is marginally nearer the ground than the main station in Braintree, but the walk from the latter is considerably more straightforward, as well as providing access to all the facilities of the town centre).

Cressing Road’s main stand, with the Quag End in the distance.

Braintree Town play at Cressing Road, known for sponsorship purposes as the Rare Breed Meat Stadium. With a capacity of 4,222, it’s the fourth smallest ground in the National League. Average attendance last season was 1,146 — the league’s lowest.

If segregation is in place, away fans are usually placed behind the goal in the Quag End (pronounced “Kwog”, short for quagmire, as the area was once a boggy mess). It’s an uncovered terrace with space for around 1,400, meaning it’s difficult to create much atmosphere there. Away supporters may also have access to part of the adjacent covered stand.

However, last season’s match was unsegregated, and if that’s the case again, we’ll also have access to covered seating along both sides of the pitch.

It’s a friendly and welcoming club, with a clubhouse open to away fans and several food and drink kiosks dotted around the ground.

Cressing Road is full of character, and while the club proudly states it now meets EFL standards, it remains a traditional, old-school ground. As Chairman Lee Harding put it when Braintree were promoted in 2024:

“Cressing Road is home and we love the old girl dearly, but we’ve been here since 1922 and there are limiting factors to the site. The best analogy I can give is: we’re a growing family, there’s another one on the way, and we’re sitting in a Victorian semi — we need to move to a four or five-bedroom house on the outskirts of town.”

Despite its quirks, the ground clearly still holds a special place in the hearts of those at the club.

Ticket prices for 2025/26, including a 4.5% booking fee:

• Adults: £22.99 (cash/card) or £20.94 (online – see link below)

• OAPs: £15.71

• Under-18s: £10.47

• Under-12s: £5.24

Buy your tickets here

The non-Quag end, visible to the left, is not notably more luxurious than the swamp-referencing place at the far end.

Our last game at Cressing Road was one to forget (for us), a 2-0 defeat (ending a 19-game unbeaten streak) in pouring February rain. Of the two goalscorers on that day, Tom Blackwell is still with the Iron, while Kyrell Lisbie has now gone professional and is playing for League One club Peterborough Utd.

Braintree finished 17th in the National League last season, collecting 56 points and 15 wins in their first year back after promotion from the National League South. While they briefly flirted with relegation early on, they eventually finished four points clear of the drop.

This summer, they’ve added forward Lewis Walker from Woking, expected to support veteran John Akinde, especially following the departure of Kyrell Lisbie (17 goals in all competitions last season) to Peterborough Utd. Given their approach last year, it’s likely loan signings will again play a key role in bolstering the squad.

The Iron (Essex Version) have had a reasonable start to the season, with victories over Halifax Town (3-0) and Yeovil Town (1-0)  coming alongside defeats to Hartlepool (2-0) and Boreham Wood (2-1). And then came a 5-0 defeat at the hands of Carlisle Utd, featuring both an own goal and a penalty. The Iron will want to make more of an impression this week.

Steve Pitt took over as Braintree manager in December 2024, with his first game the FA Trophy tie against us, which we won on penalties. He had been the club’s assistant manager in the past and had also served as Director of Football at Billericay Town, another well-known Essex non-league side.

There’s also a strong Colchester United influence at the club, with several former U’s players involved in the coaching staff.

Both Braintree Town’s nickname, ‘The Iron” and its club crest reflect their roots as a former works team for the Crittall Window Company, known for its iron window frames. The crest features imagery representing both the old factory and the nearby football ground.

Many of the houses in the streets surrounding the ground entrance (1–41 Clockhouse Way and 152–194 Cressing Road) , dating to just after the First World War, were designed by modernist architect C. H. B. Quennell for Crittall, although only a few retain their original windows.

Braintree is 46 miles to the north-east of London, with an urban area population of about 55,000.  It’s in the flat part of north Essex and it would struggle to describe itself as a tourist hotspot.

An agricultural market town, Braintree developed a wool cloth trade through the Middle Ages.  In the 19th century the Courtauld family established a silk mill in the town and many of the town’s public buildings were established by the family in this period.  By the 20th century the town was better known as the home of the Crittal Window Company, which also gave birth to what became Braintree Town FC.  Crittall have their steel-framed windows all over the world, including the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge, Yale & Princetown Universities, the MCC Building at Lords, etc.  Their windows are particularly associated with the Art Deco and Modernist movements of the early 20th century.  Crittall is still in business and based just down the road in Witham.

Some Crittall’s Windows

Steve Harley, of 1970s act Cockney Rebel, lived in Braintree for two years, while working as a journalist for the local press.

Singer Olly Murs was born in nearby Witham and went to school in Braintree

Understated rock band, The Prodigy, were formed in Braintree

Look out for a mural of the late Keith Flint, formerly of The Prodigy, on a water tower by the ground.