The 1892 Split

Lore & Background

Everton had been playing at Anfield since the club's early years, but the ground itself was leased from John Houlding, a prosperous local brewer who had provided the land and facilities. For over a decade the arrangement worked: the club grew, won the FA Cup in 1883 and 1884, and became one of the strongest sides in the nascent Football League. But as the club's commercial value rose, the question of who truly 'owned' Everton — the committee of players and gentlemen, or the man who held the lease to the ground — became increasingly fraught.

In 1892 the dispute came to a head. The Everton committee, feeling that the club was theirs by right of founding and operation, refused to accept Houlding's claim to the name and the players. Houlding, in turn, asserted that without his ground the club had no home and that the name 'Everton' was tied to the lease. The committee walked out of Anfield with the players and formed a new entity. Houlding, holding the name and the lease, re-formed his own 'Everton.' The new committee's club quickly took the name Liverpool, and the two sides found themselves on opposite sides of a divide that has never healed.

The emotional texture of the Split is inseparable from the physical geography it created. Everton moved to Goodison Park, a new ground built on the site of the old Anfield (the original Anfield was later rebuilt and became Liverpool's home). The proximity of the two grounds — separated by a matter of yards and a few streets — turned every season into a series of confrontations that transcended sport. To this day, the Split is cited by both sets of supporters as the definitive proof of their own legitimacy: Everton as the original, Liverpool as the rightful heir to the ground. Neither narrative fully closes the argument, and that is precisely why the rivalry endures with such intensity.

In Their Own Story

The November air off the Mersey cut through the wool cap as the committee men filed out of the Anfield directors' box, their breath pluming in the grey dusk. Behind them, the terraces were already emptying, the clatter of boots on the cinder path echoing like a slow drum. One of the younger players paused at the top step, looked back at the goalposts — the same posts he had scored past a hundred times — and felt the ground tilt beneath him, as if the very earth had chosen a side. A steward shouted something about the lease, about the name, but the words dissolved into the wind. The men walked on, toward a new ground not yet fully built, toward a name they had not yet settled on. Behind them, in the dimming light, a brewer's clerk was already pinning a fresh notice to the clubhouse door. Two clubs. One city. A century of noise to come.

Reader's Guide

Era: 1892 — The Founding Rupture

What defined it: A single commercial and legal dispute over a ground lease and a club name split the most prominent football club in Liverpool into two. The Everton committee departed Anfield; John Houlding retained the name and the lease; a new club (Liverpool) was born from the committee's exit. Everton rebuilt at Goodison Park.

Why it matters: The Split is Everton's origin wound. It established the club's identity as the 'original' Merseyside side, rooted in the 1878 founding at Holy Trinity Church. It created the Merseyside Derby, a rivalry that has defined the club's competitive landscape for over 130 years. It also set a precedent in English football about the relationship between a club's committee, its ground, and its name — a question that still echoes in governance disputes to this day.

For a fan new to the history, the Split is the single event that explains why Everton plays where it plays, why the derby carries such visceral weight, and why the phrase 'we were here first' is not mere bragging but a claim grounded in a specific, documented 1892 argument over a lease agreement. Understanding the Split is understanding Everton.

Did You Know?

• Everton was founded in 1878 by members of the Holy Trinity Congregational Church in Goodramgate, Liverpool, making it one of the oldest football clubs in the world and the original club to bear the Everton name in Mersey
• The dispute that triggered the Split was fundamentally about a lease: John Houlding owned the land on which Anfield stood, and the legal question of whether the club or the landlord held the rights to the name and the pl
• Goodison Park, Everton's home from 1892 onward, was built on the very site where the original Anfield had stood, meaning the two rival grounds are separated by only a short distance — a physical proximity that has fuelle
• The first competitive meeting between Everton and the newly formed Liverpool side took place in the 1892–93 season, marking the beginning of a rivalry that has continued without interruption to the present day.