One of the world’s most famous sporting institutions was born 120 years ago this week in a parish hall in Glasgow.

The small group of clergy, lay Church members and sportsmen who gathered at St Mary’s Church Hall, East Rose Street, could never have guessed it at the time, but the result of their afternoon’s work was destined to grow into a club that would hold millions in its thrall. These were the pioneers who founded Celtic.

Chris Cameron, who takes care of memorabilia at Celtic Park, said: “It is a little known anniversary. People tend to focus on later dates, when the club built a ground and started playing matches and winning their first trophies. But the whole story of the club can be traced back to that meeting.”

There was a sense that the Celtic club was an idea that had found its time when it was born in November 1887, and there were several factors at play that ensured a safe delivery.

First, there was a growing enthusiasm for a football club in the city that would represent the Irish population, and provide a focal point and a source of pride for the thousands of poor immigrants who had poured into Glasgow’s fetid slums. They were covetous of the success enjoyed by Edinburgh’s Irish club, Hibernian.

Hibs had won the SFA Cup in Glasgow in February in 1887, to much rejoicing in the green enclaves of the city. The winners held their postmatch celebration at St Mary’s Parish Hall, and the event made a huge impact on Glasgow’s Irish football followers. It was no coincidence that Celtic’s founding fathers chose the same venue to launch their own club a few months later.

The chief figures in the club’s founding were the chairman of that inaugural meting, John Glass, and Brother Walfrid, the Catholic cleric who shrewdly assessed football’s potency as a money-spinner. His aim was to create a club that would generate cash to feed the needy, especially children, in the east end of Glasgow.

Cameron said: “The impetus for the start of the club was charity, and that was first on the minds of the people who met at St Mary’s Church Hall. The aim was to build the club as a means of raising money to feed the poor, and the success of Hibs was the catalyst which gave them the confidence to go ahead.”

In hindsight, it seems odd that an Irish football club needed such a long gestation. But before Celtic were formed, the Irish community had already tried and failed to establish clubs big enough to compete with Scotland’s established sides – mainly because they didn’t have the funds to sustain such an enterprise. At least three dozen had come and gone, including an earlier Celtic that never made it out of infancy.

But the new Celtic quickly caught the imagination of the Irish populace, and attracted the kind of organisers who were equipped to make the dream a reality.

Within a few months enough subscriptions had been collected – half- pennies from people who could ill afford them, as well as more substantial donations, including one from Archbishop Charles Eyre – to get the club started. A ground was built by volunteer labour, and in May 1888 Celtic played their first fixture, against a friendly club which gave them much support in their early days – Rangers. Celtic won 5-2 in front of a crowd of 2,000, who had each paid 6d to get in, and one of the greatest sporting stories ever told had begun to unfold.

“The history which we can touch and hold, in the form of medals, begins later,” Cameron said. “We have medals at Parkhead which were won by the first successful Celtic side.” Celtic won their first championship in 1893, and their first SFA Cup in 1892.

“But the written records, and the club’s oral history, stretch back to that day on November 6, 1887, when it all began.”