AFC Hornchurch

Hornchurch Stadium on Bridge Avenue in Upminster holds 3,500, with 800 seats and a stand named after Colin McBride, and it has been home since the club left its old ground in 1952 and took the name Hornchurch & Upminster. The current club plays there as AFC Hornchurch, though supporters and the badge have gone back to calling it Hornchurch F.C. since 2019.

The line runs back to 1923, when Upminster Wanderers first took the field. The name changed twice more before the move to Bridge Avenue settled it as Hornchurch in 1961, and it held until 2005, when the old club went into liquidation. Supporters rebuilt it within weeks, re-forming on 19 May 2005 as AFC Hornchurch — a phoenix club starting again in non-league football rather than a fresh invention.

What that rebuilt club went on to do at Wembley is the reason people outside Essex know the name at all. In May 2021, Hornchurch beat Hereford United 3-1 in the FA Trophy final, a result The Athletic later framed as the story of an Essex pub team beating clubs with far bigger budgets to a national trophy. Jamie Cureton, the club's all-time leading scorer across the divisions, was part of that era, a forward whose finishing had already marked him out long before the Wembley run.

League form has followed since: an Essex Senior League title and promotion through the Isthmian pyramid in the mid-2000s, then, this year, a play-off win in the National League South that lifted the club into the National League itself, the fifth tier of English football. It leaves Hornchurch playing higher than at any point since Upminster Wanderers first kicked a ball in 1923.