Chelmsford City

In 1997 the club sold New Writtle Street, the ground it had called home since before the Second World War, and spent the years that followed playing wherever a pitch could be found. Chelmsford City did not settle again until 2006, when it moved into what is now the Dunmow Group Community Stadium, then known as Melbourne Stadium.

The club grew out of an older amateur side, Chelmsford Football Club, formed in 1878; the professional successor took the City name in 1938. Its best spells on the pitch came well before that ground was lost: Southern League Premier Division titles in 1945–46, 1967–68 and 1971–72, with a Southern League Cup won in the first two of those seasons. The 2007–08 campaign, when City topped the Isthmian League Premier Division, remains the closest the club has come to reaching that level again since.

Essex gives the fixture list its edge — meetings with Braintree Town, Colchester United, Billericay Town and Hornchurch are still spoken of as derbies with no love lost. Jimmy Greaves passed through the club early in his career, one name among several the Clarets have since sent into the professional game. Ownership changed hands again in July 2024, when Spencer Gore's Gorely Group took control of a club that had spent much of the previous three decades rebuilding what it lost when New Writtle Street was sold.

The Dunmow Group Community Stadium, claret-shirted City's home now, holds 3,065.