Our club is growing – and we need space to match!
Over the past 12 years, Topsham RFC has grown into a thriving hub for rugby and community life. But our current clubhouse, built over a decade ago, can no longer keep up with the needs of our expanding teams and loyal supporters. Now, we’re ready to take the next step — and we’re inviting you to be part of it. With your support, we’ll create a larger, more welcoming clubhouse that truly reflects the energy, ambition, and heart of our club and the wider community we serve.
Help Us Build the Future – One Brick at a Time
This exciting crowdfunding campaign will allow us to transform our clubhouse into a vibrant, modern space for our community. As part of this initiative, we’re inviting our members, supporters, and sponsors to become a permanent part of this legacy by “buying a brick.” This is also an excellent way that family and friends can make a fitting tribute to remember former members and supporters of our club who have passed away.
Each brick will be proudly displayed on our Clubhouse Wall of Supporters – a lasting tribute to those who helped make this vision a reality. Choose from three levels of support:
- Bronze (£100)
- Silver (£250)
- Gold (£500)
Every brick can be engraved with up to two names – a personal mark of your contribution and commitment. Our goal is to raise £80,000, and your support can help us bring this dream to life. If you’re interested in being part of this legacy, simply click on the purchase option under the rewards section! Please read on to find out more about our club's journey to where we are today, and our exciting plans for the development!
Why we love our rugby club!
Topsham RFC is a welcoming and family focussed community rugby club based at Bonfire Field in Topsham, near Exeter in Devon. We welcome players, supporters and rugby lovers of all ages and abilities. We are currently home to 592 players, with our playing membership spanning more than 70 years, from five years old (in our U6 team) up to 78 (in our walking rugby section), and including full contact rugby for some of our senior players well into their 60s! We are an inclusive rugby club that is very proud to provide playing opportunities for males and females in our senior, junior and walking rugby sections!
We are very proud of our roots and the players and supporters who have made us the club we are now. Topsham RFC is not just a rugby club, it is a family for life: our current President, Ron Murray, was in fact one of the players who pulled on a shirt for Topsham in our first ever match over 40 years ago! Many of our members may recognise a few familiar faces from our 1st XV from 1983-1984!
Topsham RFC 1st XV 1983-1984.
The history of our wonderful community club!
Although Topsham rugby club first took to the field in 1900, it had folded by 1902. Eighty years later the club, as we now know it, was re-formed after three friends got together for a few drinks in Topsham, after one of them had been told they were too old to play for another local club! What resulted from that fortuitous get together in the Globe Hotel on Fore Street, was the start of something very special. Over the coming few months founding members Paul Pirongs, Clive Pascoe and John Lodwick accosted family, friends and even complete strangers who looked like they could play rugby, before holding Topsham RFC’s inaugural meeting, at the Globe Hotel of course, in October 1982.
In these early years the club borrowed kit from a local club, playing home games at the nearby King George V playing fields before retiring to the Globe Hotel for post-match festivities. Indeed, a nod to our early beginnings is reflected even today with the globe on our club crest, alongside the Dutch houses and ship that are familiar sights to anyone who has visited Topsham. As the club membership grew to three teams at one point in the 1980s, we were in desperate need of not only a place to play rugby within the town of Topsham, but also our own clubhouse that we could call "home". Eventually, in 1990 with the support of two loans and generous donations from the local Topsham community (aided in part by a founding member’s sons knocking on every door in Topsham!), we bought our current site at Bonfire Field and finally had a place to call our own. Although we were then the proud owners of a prime spot to play rugby on the edge of the town, we did not however have sufficient funds to build a clubhouse for these grounds from scratch. Our founding members, resourceful as ever, though managed to buy (and move!) an old, large Ministry of Defence shed from Honiton to repurpose as our clubhouse, which the members worked relentlessly to transform and rebuild into our first clubhouse that served our club well for over 20 years! Visitors to the club back then may recall that new players were initiated by diving from the beams and that the referees had to change in the rafters!
The development of the first clubhouse in the 1990s.
By 2011 we needed to not only update our clubhouse but expand its footage too. Although we had shrunk to two men’s teams by then, we had a rapidly expanding mini and junior section, and had aspirations to establish a women’s rugby team as there was, at that time, no women’s team in the city of Exeter. However, clubhouses had got considerably more expensive since we had paid out £150 for our “shed” back in 1990! Fortunately, our club had continued to attract passionate and enthusiastic community-minded individuals to our sidelines. Our committee at the time, chaired by Neil Goodfellow, secured grants from Exeter City Council and Viridor and relentlessly fundraised, allowing us to raise the £500,000 needed to build the clubhouse as we now know it! Of course, we could not bear to say goodbye to our previous “shed”, and this is now annexed to the clubhouse and houses not only four changing rooms for players, but also two separate referee changing rooms, to the delight of the Devon Rugby Referee Society.
Our current clubhouse.
Our current clubhouse officially opened its doors in October 2013 – our inaugural rugby game brought back our Topsham “old boy” legends to play our 2nd XV, and also allowed us to officially announce our plans to create a women’s team in Exeter. Over the last 12 years Topsham rugby has grown exponentially both in numbers and the quality of rugby we play.
Notably, our men’s 1st XV has been promoted three times in the last four years, playing in Division Regional 2 Tribute South West, the highest level we have ever played at, and has just secured promotion to Regional 1, having lost only one game all season! Meanwhile, our 2nd XV have been promoted to Counties 2 Tribute Devon, which is in fact the level our 1st XV were playing at only three seasons ago! These successes mean that we have attracted a much larger player base to our community club and many more supporters and visitors to the club, particularly on a Saturday afternoon. We now regularly have up to four men’s teams running out on a regular basis, probably the only club in Devon that does this – an extraordinary achievement! Of course success breeds success, but it is also down to our dedicated and enthusiastic coaching teams, and our ongoing investment in playing and not the more favourable changing facilities we now provide our referees!
Topsham 1st XV celebrating winning Division Regional 2 Tribute South West this season.
As a club we are also incredibly passionate about building the women’s rugby game; after the establishment of our women’s team, originally called the Exonians, after the clubhouse opening in 2013, we have attracted women from Exeter and beyond to our rugby family. The team, currently called the Topsham Tempests, has 50 playing members at present, and is the longest established women’s rugby team in Exeter. Excitingly, we now have a growing female presence within our junior section, and in the last few years have successfully launched girls rugby teams for U12, U14 and U16 girls. This is incredibly important as it provides an avenue for our junior girls to continue their rugby journey at Topsham RFC and beyond and increases the number of girls playing rugby in our area!
Our current Topsham Tempests team.
Our mini and junior section, established in 2001 goes from strength to strength and is now one of the biggest and most successful sections in the South West with over 350 playing members. Our mini and junior section has proudly produced several England u18 and u20 players and, of course, a full Scotland international in Sam Skinner! Our senior men's 1st and 2nd XVs now include high numbers of young men who learnt their rugby and developed their love of the club starting as five and six-year-olds running around Bonfire Field on a Sunday morning. Just as importantly, quite literally 1000’s of boys and girls have learnt to love the game, have made lifelong friends and have developed a set of values that will stand them in good stead wherever they go and whatever they do in life. We are immensely proud of our mini and junior section and the commitment of their coaches, volunteers, and supporters that make it all happen!
The Topsham U15s team.
Some of the Topsham Fossils - our walking rugby team.
We are also delighted that Topsham RFC has been chosen as a training venue for this autumn's women’s Rugby World Cup. We will be hosting three teams who will train and Bonfire Field in the weeks running up to their games at Sandy Park. Women’s Rugby World Cup is supporting us by providing funding which we can use to invest in our pitches so that they are appropriate for professional women’s teams to train on. This investment will support our aim of providing the best possible pitches for all our playing members to use. The success of our teams and our growing membership means that we need to upgrade and improve our clubhouse facilities so that they remain fit for purpose and so we can continue to provide a great experience for our existing and future members and everyone who visits or uses the club facilities.
A birds eye view of Topsham RFC from one of our members.
Our current clubhouse infrastructure is not fit for purpose. Currently we have a small and impractical members bar, which is open to the corridor and serves as a makeshift shop for kit. Our main club room, which is used for socialising, eating, and hosting events is mundane and too small to host players and supporters after matches. Our storage area for rugby kit and equipment is part of the clubhouse building, meaning we are not fully capitalising on the space we have available currently.
The current main bar.
The under utilised area in the clubhouse that is currently housing our equipment
The layout of our current building
Our vision for the crowdfunding campaign
So, our success over the last few years and a growing use of the facilities means that we need to build a better clubhouse environment for players, supporters and young families; a place that people want to come to and can enjoy; a place at the heart of our community, that our community is proud of; and a place that we can use to generate income to support our growing membership and future generations to come to play and watch at their rugby club n the heart of Topsham.
Our “Transforming the Topsham RFC Clubhouse: Brick-by-Brick” campaign aims to do just this, transforming our club to support a sustainable future. While we have been incredibly successful in attracting external grant funding to support our rugby in the past, there are currently no grant funding opportunities available to support our ambitious plans to future proof our club! This is where crowdfunding, and importantly you, come in! Our plan is simple and cost effective, meaning we do not need to find £500,000 down the back of our members’ sofas for this revolutionary renovation!
Our project is broken down as follows:
- Construct a new tractor and equipment shed that will be situated on the edge of the upper car park in line with the bottom of the top pitch. This will store all our grounds maintenance equipment as well rugby playing equipment.
- This will free up the current tractor and equipment storage area that is located at the town end of the clubhouse. The freed-up space created by the new tractor shed will allow us to open up this area, create a new larger bar, which will be accessible from two sides, a new members area with access to an outdoor area, a bigger main clubroom incorporating the old bar and members area that can be separated by bi-folding doors. On match days, this will allow players to have an area they can sit down and eat with their playing opponents, and it will create greater flexibility for the club to be used by others on non-match days, creating greater income generation opportunities. The old cellar room will become a dedicated kit shop and storage area.
- The third part of this project is to create an outside sitting area incorporating a child-focussed play area. This will be situated at the town end of the clubhouse and will create a safe and friendly area where families can gather and enjoy themselves.
- We have also set ourselves a ‘stretch’ target of creating a more energy efficient clubhouse by investing in new solar panels. Although this is not included in the £80,000 we plan to raise now, this will be our priority for the next stage of our vision.
Here are the plans for the layout of our renovated building:
Our new space is fully flexible, allowing us to cater to the needs of our members on match days, but also have the flexibility for hiring out for large events such as weddings, with seating for up to 140 guests, or smaller meetings and conferences
What this means for you!
Our transformed clubhouse will offer a range of benefits to our members and local community and businesses. These will include:
For our members: By capitalising on our existing infrastructure and increasing the size of our clubhouse available to our members, this will provide our players with a better match day experience, including space to eat and socialise after a game, and better storage facilities for equipment to enable us to play the game and ultimately improving physical activity!
For our supporters/local community: Our expanded bar will allow us to cater for more people on match day, enhancing their gameday experience! Importantly, as well as providing improved and more comfortable facilities inside the clubhouse, the children's play area will be a vital asset to local parents, who can come down and enjoy watching (or playing!) a game of rugby, knowing that their children are being entertained! Our space inside the clubhouse is very flexible, and this means we will be able to offer it for event hire for meetings, conferences, birthday parties, weddings and much more, bringing in much needed income to support our continued growth!
For the environment: Topsham RFC is one of the few green spaces left in Topsham, and by enhancing our facilities it means that this will stay this way! We are also aware that our current clubhouse is not as energy efficient as it should be. As part of this first phase of redevelopment we will be making the club more sustainable. This will include removing the old electric radiators, which are cost inefficient, properly insulating the new clubhouse area, and installing air curtains to prevent heat loss from the club. We also have big plans to make the club greener on a larger scale, as part of the stretch target/next phase of the project, which will involve a large installation of solar panels on the clubhouse roof. This not only means we can become cost neutral for our energy bills in the long term, but importantly be making our clubhouse more sustainable for the environment.
How you can play your part
There are five simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.
1. Buy a Brick. The simplest way to support us is by buying a brick using the rewards area of this page. Once you have done this please then email the exact spellings of the names to us ([email protected]) - you can have up to two names per brick! Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
2. Make a pledge. If you are looking to donate a smaller amount, or do not want a brick on our Wall of Supporters, then please click on the donate now button!
3. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
4. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters, this could be a voucher, experience or product. We will give you a shout out on our social media channels!
5. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. You can even set up your own page, which only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. As rugby players love a bit of competition, we are setting the challenge of asking each team at the club to raise £250, with the team that raises the most getting a team plaque on our Wall of Supporters. We have lots of great ideas for fundraising if you are short of ideas!
If you have any questions about our campaign, or would like to support out fundraising in anyway, then please contact Katie Lunnon at [email protected]