The History of LCRFC

London Cornish celebrated its Golden Jubilee season in 2012/13, having been formed as Cornish Exiles in 1962 by a group of like minded men from God's Country, who met up in Fleet Street's Cock Tavern. The club changed its name to London Cornish shortly thereafter and played occasional fixtures in a variety of locations until moving to the current ground, the Richardson Evans Memorial Playing Fields in the late 1960's. These grounds have been rented to us every season since then by the Wimbledon & Putney Common Conservators. A Conservators rule forbids any matches kicking off later than 1415 on a Saturday. The club moved its training base to Rosslyn Park RFC's all weather surface in August 2016.

The advent of the League system saw London Cornish begin life in the Middlesex divisions, and there we stayed until 1997/98 when we transferred to Surrey. We steadily rose through the leagues in the noughties, and after a decade spent at Level 7, produced a stellar unbeaten season to win London 2 South-West in 2016-17. We will begin our 6th season at Level 6 as we move across to Regional 2 South-East from Regional 2 Thames in 2023-24, our 6th placed finish in the latter in 2022-23 the highest we have ever finished in the league structure. This makes us the joint 6th highest ranked Cornish club behind the Pirates, Redruth, Camborne, Launceston and St Austell. The club runs 2 teams most weekends during the season.

Our current Director of Rugby, Redruth born Dickon Moon, began his 21st season at the helm in 2023/24; he is very proud to have been part of the successful Bill Beaumont Cup Senior Cornwall County coaching set up in recent seasons and is an Honorary Life Member of LCRFC.

We are an open club and our players are drawn from across the County and around the globe, but we remain true to our Celtic roots and are proud that plenty of Cornishmen play in all of our sides at the club. Our 3 sides also boast players from Britain and Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere around the globe.

The club crest is half the One-and-All Cornwall logo and half the red cross and sword on a white background of London and we proudly wear the black and gold colours of the Cornwall County XV. Permission for this was kindly granted by the patron of the Cornwall RFU, who is the late H.R.H. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Most seasons since 1983 we have travelled to Cornwall to play for the Arthur Hunt Memorial Cup. While this used to be against the Cornwall Junior Cup Winners, with our steady progression through the leagues, from season 2010/11 the winners of the Cornwall Senior Cup hosted LCRFC, though in a break from tradition it was St Ives RFC who made the trip to London to play in 2021-22, the exiles winning the trophy back. The trophy was given to the club by the widow of the late Arthur Hunt, who fulfilled most of the committee roles at the club during his time. Plans are afoot to relaunch tours again in the near future, with the help of our vibrant and active LCRFC Cornwall Supporters Group.

Entry to all our home matches remains free, and at league matches we also provide free digital programmes so supporters (and sponsors!) are hugely encouraged! From 2016/17, LCRFC hosted our opponents at Roehampton CC on Putney Common, a venue we can use exclusively each Saturday during the season.