Chatham Town Women, previously known as Gillingham Women's Football Club, is an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

women's football Women's football most often refers to: * Women's association football Women's football may also refer to: * Women's gridiron football * Women's Australian rules football * Ladies' Gaelic football * Women's rugby league * Women's rugby union ...

club. The club compete in the and stage home matches at the Bauvill Stadium in Chatham,

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

History

In 1995,

Gillingham F.C. Gillingham Football Club is a professional association football club based in the town of Gillingham, Kent, England. The club's first team play home matches at Priestfield Stadium and competed in League Two, the fourth tier of the Englis ...

owner

Paul Scally Paul Damien Phillip Scally (born ) is a London-born businessman who served as the chairman of Gillingham Football Club between 1995 and 2022. Career Scally became wealthy through the sale of his Metronote photocopier business in South London a ...

co-opted Co-option, also known as co-optation and sometimes spelt cooption or cooptation, is a term with three common meanings. It may refer to: 1) The process of adding members to an elite group at the discretion of members of the body, usually to manag ...

a local

team called Borstal '88. In June 2014, the team was brought back under the banner of the men's football club,

, after a period as an independent outfit. Following this takeover, the club became known as Gillingham Ladies and played home games at

Priestfield Stadium Priestfield Stadium (popularly known simply as Priestfield and officially known from 2007 to 2010 as KRBS Priestfield Stadium and from 2011 to 2023 and again from 2024 as MEMS Priestfield Stadium for sponsorship purposes) is a football stadium i ...

Simon Ratcliffe Simon Ratcliffe (born 8 February 1967) is an English former professional football player, who is manager of Gillingham Ladies and the Gillingham Girls Academy. His clubs included Norwich City, Brentford and Gillingham, where he made over 100 F ...

was appointed as manager, but the club was

relegated Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in a league system, based on their performance over a season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes call ...

after the 2014–15 season and Ratcliffe subsequently departed. In June 2020,

announced that, as a result of restructuring necessitated by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, they would no longer operate Gillingham Ladies with immediate effect. The club, sanctioned by the

FA Women's National League The FA Women's National League is a group of six football divisions which sit at the third and fourth tiers of women's football in England. Founded in 1991 as the WFA National League, the league was run by the Women's Football Association, before ...

, simultaneously announced a rebrand as Gillingham Women and would continue competing as an independent entity. In October 2022 Kevin Hake, the manager-chairman of Chatham Town, was announced as owner-chairman of the side, succeeding Josh Oatham. The FA has approved a name change to Chatham Town Women from the 2023–24 season.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chatham Town WFC Women's football clubs in England

Ladies ''Lady'' is a term for a woman who behaves in a polite way. Once used to describe only women of a high social class or status, the female counterpart of lord, now it may refer to any adult woman, as gentleman can be used for men. "Lady" is al ...

Sport in Medway Football clubs in Kent Association football clubs established in 1995 1995 establishments in England FA Women's National League teams