Priestfield Stadium has been the club's home ground throughout its existence; it once held up to 30,000 fans but in the modern era the capacity is less than half that figure.
The club has twice won the championship of English football's fourth tier, in the 1963–64 and 2012–13 seasons, under managers Freddie Cox and Martin Allen respectively.
[3] The new club played its first match on 2 September 1893, losing 5–1 to Woolwich Arsenal's reserve side in front of a crowd of 2,000.
[15] During this period the club produced future stars Steve Bruce and Tony Cascarino, who was famously bought from non-league Crockenhill in exchange for a set of tracksuits.
[16] In 1987, the Gills hit the headlines when, on consecutive Saturdays, they beat Southend United 8–1 and Chesterfield 10–0, the latter a club record for a Football League match.
[15] Beset with financial problems, the club went into administration in January 1995, and by the end of the 1994–95 season faced the threat of being expelled from the Football League and closed down.
[19] He brought in new manager Tony Pulis, who led Gillingham to promotion in his first season, finishing second in the old Division Three (now Football League Two).
Hessenthaler resigned as manager in November 2004,[25] and new boss Stan Ternent[26] was unable to prevent the Gills' relegation to League One.
At the end of the 2007–08 season the club was relegated again, this time to League Two,[27] but an immediate return to the third level was secured via the play-offs after beating Shrewsbury Town in the final.
[35] In December 2022, Florida-based property tycoon Brad Galinson acquired a majority shareholding in the club, with Scally retaining minority ownership.
In 2012 the club was involved in a dispute with the local council, who alleged that Gillingham owed over £30,000 in unpaid bills relating to the training facility.
[3] In 1913 the black and white strip was dropped in favour of red shirts with blue sleeves, emblazoned with the borough's coat of arms.
[50] In the summer of 2003 it was controversially announced that the club's first choice shirts for the following season would be predominantly white, rather than blue.
The announcement received such a hostile response from supporters that the white strip was replaced by one featuring blue and black hoops, which had originally been earmarked as the team's third choice kit.
On the blue half is the county emblem of Kent, a white horse rampant, albeit slightly altered from its normal form as its mane is stylised into the letters of the word "Gills".
The club's motto, which appears on a scroll below the crest, is Domus clamantium, the Latin for "the home of the shouting men",[55] a traditional epithet associated with the town of Gillingham.
In 1897, William Ironside Groombridge, the club's secretary, took sole charge of team affairs to become Gillingham's first recognised manager.
[113] Former England international Stephen Smith was appointed as full-time manager in 1906,[114] but left in 1908, with Groombridge once again taking on team responsibilities.
When the club was admitted to the Football League in 1920, Robert Brown was appointed as manager, but he resigned a month later before the season had even begun.
[22] Peter Taylor replaced him and took the club to a second consecutive play-off final, where Gillingham gained promotion to the second tier of English football for the first time.
[124] The highest number of goals scored by a player in a single game at a professional level is the six registered by Fred Cheesmur against Merthyr Town in April 1930.
[126] The 2003 Football Fans Census revealed that no other team's supporters considered Gillingham to be among their club's main rivals.
[128] Swindon Town are seen by many fans as the club's biggest rivals, stemming from bad-tempered matches between the teams in the past.
[129] While Swindon fans generally do not consider Gillingham among their biggest rivals, there was violence when they met at Priestfield in the 2005–06 season, their first meeting since a promotion play-off match in 1987.
The footage featured the overweight Emney, wearing a flat cap and monocle and smoking a cigar, dribbling the ball past the entire Gills defence and scoring a goal.
[134] A film entitled The Shouting Men, released in March 2010, centres on a group of Gillingham fans and features scenes shot at Priestfield.