Granted a sneak peek inside the new Hibs Visitor Centre, I was instantly drawn to one special attraction
Did your great-great-uncle play for the Hibees? He may be on the Wall of Fame ...
The wall of fame catches the eye as soon as you walk in the door. It would take the self-restraint of a monk not to scan the list of players to have represented Hibs, over a century and a half, in search of the familiar. Or if you strike it lucky, family*.
But there’s so much more to the new Hibs Visitor Centre about to be opened to the public at Easter Road. They’ve packed a lot into the small space of the old ticket office on Albion Place, salvaging memorabilia that had – in some cases – been sitting in cupboards and store rooms for decades.
The idea is to use the space cleverly, rotating content in order to provide fans, visitors and – the club hope – tourists with an ever-changing experience, either as part of stadium tours or as a stand-alone attraction. Still, you’d expect a few core items – Lawrie Reilly’s match-worn boots, for instance – to remain intact.
Granted early access to the new venue, it was impossible not to be impressed. Even if there is one element of the display that is, by necessity, incomplete.
Curators always looking to ‘refine’ attractions
Scott Souness, director of marketing brand at Hibs, points out that there’s a rather large disclaimer given a place of prominence on the list of players to have represented the club over 150 years, laughing as he admitted: “We've got a nice wee piece in the middle that says we are always looking to refine it, so you can get in touch with us. Because I have no doubt there will be someone's great uncle who played for Hibs in 1907 that we've missed out!
“But we've done our absolute best. Tom Wright (official custodian and historian of the Hibernian Historical Trust), who's done a lot of work with the club, helped us compile the list, using different third-party sources and the club's archive to pull it together. Again, the club never had something like this before so it's good they actually have built this wall of names of the players that played for Hibs.
*Yep, found one ... but would like to know more
“It was the club's 150th anniversary and the working group kind of quickly established that there was nowhere showcasing the club's history. There's nowhere that people on a non-match day in particular can come to the stadium and learn about the club.
“That's not just fans, that's also schools, community groups and even tourists. So when we kind of decided that the ticket office was moving to the Famous Five Stand, this building became vacant and we thought it would be the perfect size to install a visitor centre.
“There's lots of really nice memorabilia around. I mean, one of the best things about the 150th anniversary is that we're now working much closer with the Hibernian Historical Trust, who I didn't actually realise had such a depth of artefacts and items.
Joe Baker’s England cap and 1886 Scottish Cup medal
“There’s a lot of them in here. Crazy things like the first Scottish Cup winner's medal from 1886-87. You've got like Joe Baker's England cap, you've got Lawrie Reilly’s actual boots in here.
“And the crazy thing about that is they were all just sitting in a cupboard. They weren't being viewed, they weren't accessible to the public or to the fans, So to now have them in here and showcased is massive for the club and for the Historical Trust.”
There’s a lot covered in words, pictures, pennants and programmes, along with a collection of shirts through the years. Cup wins and the famous Hands Off Hibs campaign are all given their due.
Souness admits that the toughest part of pulling together the collection was deciding what heirlooms and mementoes to leave out, saying: “Yeah, 100%. You can see it's not the biggest of spaces.
“So we’ve tried to be clever with things like the washing lines down the side to hang the pennants; that just brings things to life. And then you've only got a certain amount of cabinet space so it's picking the right items.
“But it's not like once you've been here, once you've seen it all, it'll be on rotation so there'll be different themes throughout the year. For example when we get to the 10-year anniversary of the Scottish Cup win, there'll be a Scottish Cup theme in here and stuff like that.
“A lot of the work was done particularly to push through a cupboard, for example, that allows us to showcase different strips from different eras. And, again, that'll be on rotation; there'll be lots of different kits available throughout the year for people to come and see.
“The club has needed something like this for a while and it's just great to now have this centre open for fans and schools and tourists to come and learn about Hibs. I think we're working with the trust to look at museum status, which opens you up to additional funding.
“So we can move this hopefully into the floor upstairs, expand to different parts of the stadium. And yeah, I hope this is just the start of the visitor centre and we can start to grow in years to come.”