Who are Leyton Wingate?
If we’re being pedantic, this club existed between 1975 and 1992. There’s a huge back story before. And there’s a bit of drama after too. Leyton and Wingate are the two clubs (shock horror) who came together; the new club taking the former’s place in Athenian League Division One. Inside two seasons, they claimed the championship in an early pinnacle for them. And it’d be a feat they’d repeat during the 1981-2 season when they didn’t lose any league games.
With that second title success, the club stepped up to Isthmian League Division Two. As the league grew two years later, Boro’ found themselves in the same North division as them. We pushed them close during that 1984-5 season too; finishing in fourth – only six points behind them. So, they went up. But it only took us one season to catch them up. Even so, they always seemed to get one step ahead of us. In 1987, they were promoted again; this time to the Premier Division. One year season later, we were… relegated.
We did catch up with them once more, however. It would be the 1991-2 campaign; a time when we were climbing the ladder, while they had just been relegated after four seasons in the Premier Division. It’d be their final season as we had come to know them. The reason is because Wingate went on their own path; leaving Leyton as a standalone club for the first time in more than 25 years. That arrangement lasted for three years before Leyton then merged with Walthamstow Pennant to create Leyton Pennant.
In 1997, as a side note, a new Leyton FC formed. It prompted a legal battle that took five years to reach a verdict. The crux of the matter is whether Leyton Pennant or the new club had the right to claim the long history of Leyton back to 1878 or something. The new club won the day, which left Pennant with no legal right to claim anything that went before. But that new club ended up being dissolved in 2011; suspended after not paying its league fees and withdrawing due to money problems.
With all its staff then leaving too, the club was effectively dead.
