Some key dates...

1970’s – Newent Ladies Hockey Club started, probably playing on a pitch at Newent Community School.

1973 – The pitch at the school became unavailable due to changes being made on the playing fields, so they moved to Redmarley.

The picture above is the men's team from the mid 70's. Taken at Leominster the players are (from left to right):

• Standing
• Frank Martyn, John Morton, Mike Gray, Mike Smith, Alan Slade, Ray Causon(GK) Richard Chapman, Sam Barr, Geoffrey Cox (Umpire)
• Kneeling
• Peter Bubb, Tony Rust, Nigel Smith

1979 – The Sports Hall was built at the school, so the ladies started playing some indoor hockey.

1981 – The Redmarley pitch was getting too expensive and although there was a Redgra pitch at the school, it too was deemed to expensive, so the ladies moved to a pitch at the Scarr which was maintained by players and particularly Mr Brace (Ann Timney’s Dad) and Gill and Dave Bywater.

1984 – This was the year of great change. The Ladies and Men joined forces and along with the Cricket Club, bought the 3 Ashes playing field (used to be the playing field for the Newent Grammar School which is now the Community Centre). This was run by the Sports Union.

These two pitches were played on, with some home games played on the Redgra at Newent Community School, until the mid 1990’s.

1995 – We had a major celebration to mark the 75th anniversary for the Men’s Club and 25th for the Ladies by playing a "1920's" style game (with 1920’s rules and the traditional attire and equipment of the times...) on a grass pitch at the school, followed by a celebration Dinner and Dance in the School Hall.

1997 - The school, with the support of the Hockey Club then installed a sand-based artificial grass pitch. Newent Hockey Club sold its share of 3 Ashes to the Cricket Club and put £5k into the new pitch to secure it as its home venue. Whilst this was being constructed on the site of the old redgra, Newent had to play its home games at the RAF Innsworth (now Imjin Barracks). That was fun as we had to sign everyone in each time!

The opening of this pitch was celebrated in Jan 1998 with a tournament and Club Day.

2012 - We contributed to the research and development for a replacement surface to the old sand dressed astroturf pitch and our brand new astroturf pitch was formally opened by the Mayor of Newent in September 2012.

We now have a thriving Club which caters for all ages. We have 3 mens and 3 ladies league sides, Vets, Social SuperVets, Mixed, Badgers and Vixens development sides.

We are committed to Youth development and encourage young players by including them in adult hockey as soon as they are of an age and ability to enjoy and benefit from the experience.

The Club usually has several Youths playing representative hockey, with several past and present players representing Gloucestershire and the West of England