BURY Football Club can trace their roots back to the current Royal Bank of Scotland building on The Rock.

It was there, in the then White Horse Hotel, that the public meeting took place from which the club was born.

The day, Friday, April 24 ,1885, was the culmination of a number of meetings aimed at founding a club after local folk had seen how the sport had taken off in towns such as Sheffield and Bolton.

Bury was a rugby town back then, but there were still a number of established association teams playing before the club was formed. Bury Wesleyans were the town’s premier club and competed with Bury Unitarians, Bury Rovers, Bury Tradesmen, Bury North End, Bury Coffee House and Gigg Rovers.

The club were restricted to friendlies and the Lancashire Junior Cup in the first four years of their existence and their first ever recorded game was a 0-0 draw at Little Lever on September 5 1885.

After securing the tenancy of Gigg Lane for an annual rent of £25, the club’s first team played their maiden match at their new home a week later when they beat Wigan 4-3 – Lonsdale scoring the first ever goal. The gate receipts that day were £1.82.

Bury were admitted to the Lancashire League in 1889 and they finished second in their first season – the highlight being an 8-0 defeat of West Manchester when Conway bagged five goals – and were runners-up in the Lancashire Junior Cup.

In 1892, the club’s chairman/manager John T Ingham handed the club the nickname of “‘The Shakers” after a rousing team-talk before the Lancashire Cup final when he said “We shall shake ’em. In fact we are the Shakers.”

The club won the Lancashire League in the following two seasons before, in 1894, they joined the Football League’s second division – winning it in their first season.

They played Liverpool in a ‘Test Match’ for a place in the top flight and triumphed 1-0 thanks to a goal from Millar.

Two of the most significant events in the club’s history came in 1900 and 1903 when they won the FA Cup. Goals from Jasper McLuckie (2), Jack Plant and Billy Wood sealed a 4-0 win over Southampton at Crystal Palace in the 1900 final.

And three years later, Plant and Wood were on the scoresheet again as Derby County were hammered 6-0 to set a record FA Cup final victory that still stands today. George Ross, Charlie Sagar and Joe Leeming (2) were the other goalscorers.

The team’s highest league finish came in the 1925/26 season when the Shakers came fourth in Division One – Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool all finishing well below them.

After 63 years of competing in the top two divisions, the club dropped to Division Three North in 1957 before, in the 1960/61 season, they won the Division Three Championship, scoring 108 goals on the way.

Relegated to Division Four in 1980, Bury marked their centenary year in 1984/85 by winning promotion under the management of Martin Dobson. A demotion came again in 1991/92 before they started to flourish under the boardroom leadership of Terry Robinson and Hugh Eaves.

Mike Walsh took the team to the Division Three play-offs at Wembley in 1995, but the Gigg Laners lost 2-0 to Chesterfield.

Walsh left shortly after and was replaced by Stan Ternent, who instigated a glorious period for the club — taking them from the fourth tier of English football to the second in two fantastic seasons.

A season-long stay in the Championship was ended as Bury slipped back down the leagues and hit financial troubles. In March 2002, they went into administration and came perilously near to closure before being saved by the hard work of their fundraising supporters.

Perhaps the lowest point, on the pitch, came when they were thrown out of the 2006/07 FA Cup for fielding an ineligible player against Chester City.

But the Shakers’ fortunes have picked up following the appointment of former player Alan Knill as manager in February 2008.

He took the club to the play-off semi-finals in his first full season and is currently plotting a new course for League One, which would be a fitting way for Bury to celebrate 125 memorable years in exsistence.