It would appear that Dunstable Town first saw the light of day in October 1883
On 2nd January 1894, Mr. GH Barford of Luton Town wrote to all known clubs in the county, and invited them to a meeting in the Cowper Arms Coffee Tavern, Luton. The meeting, held on January 16th 1894, was for the purpose of deciding if it were possible to form a County Association, which became necessary due to a recent FA stipulation. Nine clubs turned up, a Mr. White and a Mr. Bull representing Dunstable. A month later the County Association was formed, with Luton Town, Bedford Town, Markyate and Dunstable Town.
The first annual meeting of the county took place on August 30th 1894, and was attended by a Mr. Whitbread, who donated a trophy for competition among the member clubs. The County Cup was born.
There was, it seems, great excitement among the Dunstable support and members when they drew Luton Montrose in the first round. Montrose were the top dogs at the time.
In the build up to the cup match, the Blues, as they were known even then, defeated Luton Victoria 10-0, and beat both Wolverton and Leighton 4-0. Early in November interest in the club was so high that a reserve side was formed. The kick-off in those pre-floodlight days was 3.30 - impossible you might think, but during the last war the clocks were altered by 2 hours, making it the lunar equivalent of 1.30 today.
A packed train of supporters left Dunstable North and headed for Bury Park for the match. The game was full of controversy and incident. Thanks to the brilliance of Mr. A Beasley, Dunstable's outside-left, the Blues were 3-0 up in 20 minutes, and a cup shock was on the cards. The Montrose side became, it is reported, very rough after the third goal and Beasley had to retired with a broken arm following a loutish tackle by a Montrose defender. The injury was attended to by a doctor who was summoned. The home team pulled one back near half time.
In the second half the home side continued to use strong arm tactics against the ten men Dunstable and soon equalised. Dunstable fought back hard, but couldn't prevent the home team from scoring the winner.
The Dunstable support, it is reported, were very unhappy about the referee and tactics employed by Luton Montrose, who went on to win the first ever Beds Senior Cup. However, justice was done and Dunstable won the trophy the following season.
Due to the horrendous conditions in the winter of 1894, no further play took place until February 1895.
Although detailed history is very sketchy for the new few years, the club was "re-awakened" in 1950, when a band of volunteers led by Frank Nicholls, and encouraged by Town Mayor Alderman Tom Sandland worked hard to make a field at Kingsway, behind Bagshawe's, into a football ground good enough to enter the fairly new Metropolitan League (which included teams such as Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Fulham, and Luton).
Dunstable enjoyed a relatively safe first season in the Metropolitan League, finishing 11th in a league of 16 teams. Warning bells started to sound in the 1951-52 season when the league was cut to 14 teams, but a good run of form saw Dunstable finishing 10th.
With the league returning to 16 teams for the 1952-53 season, Dunstable had a good 7th place finish. The 1956-57 season saw Dunstable reach the first round proper of the FA Cup, losing 3-1 away at Margate.
The first Board of Directors was formed in 1962 by Alderman Wally Creasey. When the time came to move from Kingsway, an open field in Brewers Hill was converted into a football club, and between 1958 and 1962 the facilities were improved greatly.
Wally Creasey and his associates left Luton Town and helped put Dunstable Town Football Club on the map. Many thousands of pounds were spent, and many of the players had come straight from Luton Town's first team, including Terry Kelly, Seamus Dunne (Manager), Brendan McNally, and many others.
When Mr. Creasey died, the ground was named after him, and his widow, Joyce unveiled the plaque on the main stand naming the ground Creasey Park.
With the ever-expanding Metropolitan League size, Dunstable's end-of-season position got better and better.
Whilst records are unclear as to the final position and results of the majority of games, the 1965-66 season saw Dunstable promoted to the Southern League. The notes in 'Bert's Banter' in the 1965-66 programme in the home match against Dover, however, state 'You must admit that we have finished off the last year with a flourish, and looking at the league table this isn't bad for our first Southern League season, and I am convinced we will be a lot higher before the end of the season'.
Dunstable were to remain in the Southern League, and climb into the Premier before long.
Mid-table finishes, and relegation scrapes (20th out of 22 teams in 1967-68) saw Dunstable battling for their place in the Southern League Division 1. After finishing 19th out of 20 in the 1970-71 season, the club was moved into the regional division of the Southern Premier. More bottom of the table finishes saw Dunstable end the 1972-73 season at the foot of Division 1 North, having won just 5 games all season, and scoring only 26 goals. Having finished in the bottom three for six years in a row (as incorrectly stated in Barry Fry's autobiography), the aforementioned figure took the reins at Creasey Park as manager.
Fry's first two games in charge pulled in 34 and 42 fans respectively. Dunstable finished at the foot of the table again, but there were changes to be made...
Dunstable had a new owner - Mr. Keith Cheeseman. That name is more than enough to send shivers down the spine of any knowledgeable Dunstable Town fan. Sent to prison in 1990 after being hunted down at his villa on the Costa del Sol by the FBI for laundering £242million worth of bonds, having previously ruined Dunstable Town Football Club single-handedly.
Many believe that were it not for Cheeseman's previous involvement with Dunstable, we'd have a much better standing in the press and minds of the public than we currently do. Who knows where we would be now?
Cheeseman had a lot of money, or so it seemed. He would often leave blank, signed cheques with Fry, and there were no limits to the spending.
Former West Brom and England striker Jeff Astle was bought in, and George Best even gave the club £25 out of his own pocket to buy a new set of nets.
It was shortly after that Best agreed to sign for Dunstable in the pre-season of 1974-75. That season was to see Dunstable promoted back to the Southern Premier, having scored 105 goals - the same amount they'd conceded two season earlier. New signing Jeff Astle was the scorer of 34 of the goals
However, it seems things were not quite as they seemed, and perhaps Cheeseman didn't so much have money, but figures. After getting Dunstable into serious debt with his mis-dealings, the club was shut down in the 1975-76 season.
Dunstable Football Club was formed to take over the fixtures of Dunstable Town, and they finished 8th out of 22 in the 1975-76 season. Unfortunately, due to being a 'new' club, they had to begin the next season in Division 1 North, where they finished in the bottom three.
The days of Harold Stew and John Crumley in the Southern League - Southern Division saw Dunstable linger around mid-table for the duration of the 1980s and early 1990s. At the end of the 1993-94 season, the club closed for the second time.
In early 1997, the acquisition of Creasey Park was first negotiated by Steve Kaye and Darren Croft, to enable Dunstable to again have a thriving non-league football club. In the summer of 1998, this dream came true, when Darren Croft and Paul Reeves took over as managers of Dunstable Town Football Club under Steve Kaye as chairman.
The South Midlands Division 1 was stormed during the 1999-00 season, with The Blues winning the title and going unbeaten through the entire season to gain promotion.
The following season was again a promotion season, finishing 2nd to move into the South Midlands Premier. This season also saw our record unbeaten run of 51 matches end in a narrow 1-0 away loss at Tooting & Mitcham in the FA Vase.
The first season in the South Midlands Premier saw a 7th place finish. The team was built upon, and Dunstable Town stormed the league once again to be crowned Champions and earn promotion into the Ryman League Division 1 North when Steve Kaye resigned after seeing a success on the pitch in his years as chairman.
Due to league restructuring, Dunstable were promoted into the Southern Premier for the 2004-05 season. This was to be one of the toughest seasons in Dunstable's history. A 6-0 home defeat at the hands of Chippenham on the opening day of the season saw the start of a very tough battle.
The Blues crashed out of the FA Cup in the 2nd qualifying round at home to AFC Wimbledon in October, followed by a nasty ten game losing streak, and the loss of joint-manager Darren Croft, along with a host of talented players saw the Blues' future looking bleak.
However, Roger Dance became the new chairman and ex-Chelsea and England legend Kerry Dixon was drafted in as joint-manager for the ever-present and truly dedicated Paul Reeves.
The club had avoided its third closure, which it was literally hours away from. The Blues were eventually relegated to Division One West and roughly three thousand miles on the road, but the makings of a good side was there if they could be kept.
2005/06 saw another worrying point for the Blues.Pre-season saw a large number of players leave to other local sides. As the first team's season deteriorated, Gary Worth and Lee Cowley's youth team took the SCYFL Nemean division by storm, reaching two cup finals and a quarter final to cap off a remarkable time for the youngsters, although it'd be unfair to call them the future, as almost a dozen of them had patched up the first team at various points of the season.
As talented as these teenagers were, they were unable to prevent a 21st place finish in the Western Division. The long-serving Paul Reeves tendered his resignation following a disastrous season which saw large amounts of his work of the past eight years, go up in smoke.
As the Regiment prepared to mount an assault on the Spartan South Midlands League, the FA announced the National Game Constitution, which to the delight of Towns' fans, saw Dunstable stay at step 4, moving to the new and vastly more suitable Midland Division.
With the new management of Darren Feighery, new reserve and youth 'B' sides, The Blues witnessed a fantastic season which saw the Bedfordshire Senior Cup, Bedfordshire Premier Cup, Colwyn Cup, Eastern Junior Cup and SCYFL Delphian division title come to Creasey Park as well as a strong mid-table finish for the first team.
The following season saw more success with the Lee Cowley's reserve team picking up the Suburban League Northern Division in addition to a League Cup final and League Shield semi-final. The youth teams also got their hands on silverware with Will McLaughlan's A team winning a SCFYL division for a third straight season and Kevin Thoburn's B team winning the Beds County Floodlit Cup.
With a £3.3m redevelopment of Creasey Park Stadium on the horizon both Roger Dance and Darren Feighery exited with Pete Burgoyne taking the job as chairman and Lee Cowley being promoted to first team manager.
Disaster struck over the winter as the function hall at Creasey Park collapsed, taking with it a significant chunk of the budget and the boardroom.
Cowley struggled after a good start to the season, highlighted by a 5-1 win at Canvey Island in the FA Cup, and ultimately resigned in March.
Mike Locke and Wayne Roff took over temporarily. Mike and Wayne led the team to a record twelfth Bedfordshire Senior Cup but were unfortunately relegated from the Southern League.
2009/10 was another stand-out year for the Young Blues as Lee Connelly's U18s reached the FA Youth Cup 1st round, narrowly losing away to the MK Dons. The youngsters also won the Colwyn Cup and finished runners up in the Brian Hitchings Challenge Cup, and saw a staggering eight youth players selected for first team duties.
The season also became one of consolidation as Pete Burgoyne attempted to secure the redevelopment of Creasey Park and a successor. His successor was to be the man who sparked it all off in 1997 - Darren Croft.
2010/2011. With the managers job in the hands of John Mcloughlin Dunstable finished 7th in South Midlands Premier division and runners up in the Beds Senior cup, but Darren Croft was already planning the future.
2011/2012. Roger Dance once again became chairman and Paul Reeves came back to join Darren Croft to make up the old team of first team managers, September saw the finish of the Development of Creasy Park and the 6 year wait for the new stadium was over.
The season was to be a good one for the Blues, but a one of nearly, they lost out on the league in the last few weeks to Royston and were beaten in the Beds Senior Cup at Kenilworth Road by Luton in a thrilling game 5-4 after extra time. Dunstable and Luton were not finished yet as they had to contest the Beds premier Cup and this time Dunstable ran out the winners 1-0.
2012-2013 become a record breaking season for Dunstable when the SSMFL Premier League was won undefeated, with a record of 36 wins and 6 draws in 42 matches. This enabled Dunstable to claim the title The Invincibles, previously only held by two clubs, Preston North End and Arsenal, the only teams to go unbeaten in the football pyramid.
Adding to the league trophy was the Beds Premier Cup with a 1-0 win against Luton Town, and the SSMFL Challenge Trophy completed a historic treble for the club.
Dunstable were now back in the Southern league.
2013-2014. was again a fantastic year for the blues. Their first year back they won the Southern league Central Division, gaining back to back promotions and a place in the Southern Premier.
To add to this they won the Southern league champions Trophy and team of the year.
The long hard road back to the Southern Premier had arrived.