Bristol City fan "heartbroken" at loss of memorabilia collection
The blaze saw much of a decades-old collection of match programmes and tickets destroyed
Ben Grice, a Bristol City superfan received the devastating news last week that his collection of thousands of club souvenirs dating back to the 1950s had gone up in flames, and he’s now appealing for help to rebuild his collection.
The blaze broke out after an electrical fault caused a fire in the barn where Grice’s collection of thousands of match programmes and tickets, and hundreds of shirts was stored at his family home.
Ben had been continuing a family tradition that his grandfather began - of attending The Robins’ matches each week, and collecting souvenirs.
He estimated that he had around 50,000 programmes, and 50,000 tickets. The earliest of these dated back to the 1950s.
Now the City fan, who has been a season-ticket holder for the past 10 years has turned to social media, and the community on the Bristol One Team forum to ask for help to rebuild his collection.
“It was a family tradition really, we always used to go out to the game, collect the programmes and get the team sheets, and go back home and store them in a box and build them game by game," he told us.
Ben says he hopes to maintain the family tradition, saying that he’s still got his season ticket, and so “I’m going to try and continue as I can”.
The motivation to do so goes back at least a decade and comes from his grandfather who took him to his first game, and used to show him his old memorabilia.
After posting on social media sites Ben says the reaction has been really positive.
"I've had an excellent response from loads of people, saying I’ve got a load of programmes you can have, shirts you can have," he said.
“There’s been a lot of good people out there who’ve helped me so far."
This will have helped after what he says was a tough call to receive from his Dad, who called Ben up at work to tell him a blaze had taken hold of the barn.
“I was heartbroken really, I just broke down, because you think just how many memories, how much family history was in there, and it’s all just gone."
With Bristol City playing Derby away this week, Ben hopes to restart the collection. He wants it to reach its former heights.
If you want to help, you can get in touch with Ben via this fan forum here.