The club was founded by legal clerks in Birmingham,[2] led by two Scotsmen who had recently arrived in Birmingham; John Carson[3] and John Campbell Orr, both from Glasgow, and both of whom had experience in football, Carson with Queen's Park and Campbell Orr (albeit under the rugby union code) at St Andrews University in 1868–70.

[10] In 1878, Archie Hunter, already well known as a footballer in Scotland, came to Birmingham for work, and, knowing about the Calthorpe club from its friendly games with Queen's Park, resolved to join.

Calthorpe however was a resolutely amateur club, while one of Hunter's team-mates at Third Lanark was J.J. Lang, considered the first-ever professional footballer.

Its last FA Cup appearance was a home defeat to Walsall Town in 1883, by a score given as either 9–0[17] or 8–0,[18] some confusion being caused by a goal for Collington that was "for some unaccountable reason" disallowed.

The biggest recorded crowd for a Calthorpe home match was 1,000, for a first round Senior Cup tie against West Bromwich Albion in 1881;[26] the well-funded visitors won by a surprisingly narrow 3–2.