From a distance, the town of Lewes looks like just about any other nestled into the countryside around Sussex, a region in the south-east of England.
Sliced in two by the ribbony river Ouse, each half of the town is crosshatched with old cobblestoned streets and splotched with dense green gardens. Modest red brick cottages and grey stone castles sit side by side, their dark chimneys and ancient spires pointing up and over the hills into the bright, open farmland beyond.
Lewes' town centre, the High Street, is dotted with used bookstores, doily tea shops and pubs with heavy curtains in the windows. It is a kind of storybook town, a remnant of a time long past, "lying like a box of toys under a great amphitheatre of chalk hills," according to 18th century poet William Morris.
But if you look a little closer, there is something different about this quiet town tucked away in the misty hills; something far more revolutionary than what appears on the surface.
And it can be found in a sunny corner of Lewes' main football ground, The Dripping Pan.
Just inside its wooden-gate entrance, standing against a flint-speckled wall of stone, there is an eight-foot-tall statue. Titled "Inexorable", it depicts two women fused together at the shoulder and hip, the loose hair of one of the figures fixed forever in a breeze.
They are Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two trailblazing women pirates from the 1700s who dressed as men "to escape poverty and patriarchy", eventually falling in love with each other as they stole ships, treasure, and hearts around Jamaica and the wider Caribbean.
Originally, the statue, sculpted by artist Amanda Cotton, was meant to be placed in Devon, a county in England's south-west. But the local council rejected it, deeming its representation of two empowered, rebellious, queer women as "inappropriate".
That's when Lewes FC, the only football club in the world with gender equality between men and women players, stepped in.
"As pioneers of gender equality in football, known for our radical stance on smashing gender stereotypes, we hope our community will be inspired by this incredible work of art," Lewes FC director Karen Dobres said at the statue's unveiling last year.
"We think Anne and Mary will feel very much at home in the town of Lewes."
It's a fitting symbol for a club that, in addition to equal pay, has equality threaded throughout its entire organisation: its senior players receive the same pitch, the same training facilities, the same marketing budget, and the same cut of match-day revenue. The gender representation of its current management team is also split 50:50.
The women's first-grade team plays in the second-tier Championship, one level below the top-flight Women's Super League, while the men's team are in the seventh division.
Despite being one of the oldest football clubs in the country, tracing its founding back to 1885, Lewes FC is also, at the same time, one of the newest and most forward-looking in its unapologetic pursuit of gender equality through structural change.
In 2017, the club launched a campaign called Equality FC, becoming the first club in the world to equalise playing budgets and resources across their senior teams.
Almost immediately, they saw an uptick in attendances, sponsorship, and media coverage — a trend that has accelerated as women's football has flourished across the country, most recently in the record-breaking Women's European Championships last year.
The club have leaned into their progressive social ethos even more since then, leading the conversation around equalising FA Cup prize money, which historically was so low for women's teams in the competition that some of them lost money just for participating.
As a result of their advocacy, in March of last year, England's Football Association announced they would increase the women's prize fund tenfold.
However, unsatisfied by incremental changes, the club earlier this week published a letter they sent to former Lionesses player Karen Carney, who's currently leading a review into English women's football, once again asking for an #EqualFACup in terms of prize money.
"Sharing the total combined prize fund equally between men and women has the power to be transformative in the women's game," the letter reads.
"It would allow clubs to invest more funds in player wages, facilities, equipment, medical care, staffing, travel costs, and everything the women's football pyramid needs to thrive and grow.
"Put simply, it will allow us to focus on football."
In addition to their work on gender equality and anti-gambling initiatives, Lewes FC also embodies the value and virtue of democratic governance and ownership.
As more football clubs are gobbled up by massive corporations, nation-states, and billionaires, Lewes FC is 100 per cent fan-owned, volunteer-run, and not-for-profit.
There is no sense of precarity or fear that the loss of a single major investor will lead to total liquidation, which many English clubs have experienced in the past few years. Instead, they are run by, and for, the community; one of the last bastions of the romantic idea of what a football club can (or should) be.
The Dripping Pan itself is a kind of symbolic patchwork of this grassroots ethos: its match-day menu consists of several vegan options; its corporate boxes are repurposed beach huts lining the old stone walls; after games, players mingle with fans at the clubhouse bar that serves locally-brewed craft beers, ciders, and prosecco on tap.
Their anti-establishment philosophy is also visible in their match-day posters that pay homage to revolutionary figures, art, music, and pop culture including Che Guevara and the Sex Pistols.
They even have a brass band, complete with trumpets and drums and saxophones, that plays non-stop from whistle to whistle. Afterwards, everybody — fans and players and coaches alike — go back to a local pub to mingle and talk about the game.
Like a lot of football people, Aussies Isobel Dalton and Libby Copus-Brown had heard whispers of a club in England doing things differently. But it wasn't until they both arrived to Lewes' unassuming front gates as players that they realised just how special the club really was.
"I'm originally English, so I knew a lot of English teams and had heard Lewes had equal pay and everything like that, but I never looked into them beyond that," Dalton, the former Brisbane Roar and Napoli player, told the ABC.
"It wasn't until I was looking to move back to England [from Australia] that I was like, 'this is actually a really cool club.'
"They're super progressive, they've very community-based, and I'm also a part-owner. I think they've hit nearly every country to have an owner, which is huge.
"It's very inclusive between the men and the women. The teams are so connected, which I really like, because often other clubs that I've been at don't really have that sense of connection between the two — or even the connection between the owners and directors and the players.
"But here, I know a lot of the directors and the people who own the club, which is important as a player because they're the people that are investing in you. So it's nice to have that connection and know who these people are that are investing their time and money into making our careers what they are.
"You are very, very valued here. Often you can be at clubs where nobody has any idea if you're a player or a staff member, whereas at Lewes, the people take the time to know who you are. They care about who you are and what you do and where you come from. It's brilliant."
Copus-Brown joined the club last year in her first-ever stint overseas. Following several seasons in Australia with the Newcastle Jets and Western Sydney Wanderers, the 25-year-old had watched Dalton's journey abroad with curiosity and, having been born in Brighton — about 20 minutes south-west of Lewes — came full-circle when she arrived.
"It just feels like a big family, to be honest," she said. "We interact with the men's team quite a lot, I know the staff really well. I feel like I've known them for years just because they're around all the time."
"Being able to access the same things that the men access like the facilities and the staff members, it makes you feel valued as a player and as a person, just as much as the men.
"It's also just really tiny things, like your clothes being washed and laid out before games. [In Australia], we'd walk into the men's change rooms and see their stuff was pristine, laid out, ready to go, but ours was just dumped in the middle.
"These things are small, but they do sit in the back of your mind where you're like, 'Why do they get that and we don't?' And there's never really an answer, it's just how it's always been.
"So it makes a big difference not having to worry about it all the time now."
Dalton and Copus-Brown are also both members of the non-profit charity Common Goal, founded by former Spain and Manchester United star Juan Mata, whose members pledge 1 per cent of their income to projects that equip and empower communities around the world to propel causes including anti-racism, gender equality, climate action, and LGBTQIA+ inclusion.
Recognising how closely both organisations align with their values off the pitch, the Aussie duo are planning to start up their own free football clinics thanks to a Common Goal grant, partnering with Lewes to bring it to life.
"That's one of the best things about Lewes: if you have something to say, they're there to listen," Copus-Brown said. "They'll do whatever they can to help you achieve your own goals.
"There's so many passionate people in the club. The way that they speak about things, you can tell that they truly believe what they talk about and they're really pushing to make a change.
"Having a group of people who all think the same way is incredible. You don't really get that much in football: most of the time it's a handful of people trying to do something, then a couple who aren't really bothered.
"But the whole of the women's team — the staff, the players — came together to write this FA Cup letter. There wasn't a single person that didn't want to be part of it. I'm so proud to be part of it and watch everyone push and work together for this."
In that sense, Dalton recognises that she and Copus-Brown are part of something much larger than themselves.
"We're a part of history," Dalton said.
"We're the only club in the world that offers equal pay to both men and women. We are trailblazers in doing what we're doing, and it's nice to be recognised and to be one of their players.
"There's a sense of pride you get playing for Lewes because there is literally no other team like us. There's an immense pride we carry when we step out on the field, which is what I really like.
"And this inclusive culture has a kind of domino effect. Once you get here and you're embedded in their values, you bring that out within yourself. And then it flows on to all the people around you and everyone else who joins. It's infectious.
"No matter who you are here, everyone gets along, everyone's got that connection. There's no hierarchy at all; everyone's equal. We're all together and we're all fighting for the same thing. We all want the same thing. There's something really special in that."
While they're used to making history off the pitch, Lewes are also starting to make history on it.
Thanks to their equal opportunity approach, the women's team became full-time professionals in 2017 and have since seen steady improvements to match-day attendances, resourcing, and playing standards, climbing up the tiers to now being within touching-distance of the top-flight.
It's a far cry from the wheelie-bin ice baths, car-park change rooms, and self-purchased strapping tape Dalton experienced while playing part-time in Australia's A-League Women just a few years ago.
"The standard is getting better and better," she said.
"The amount of games we get — 22 matches over the space of nine months, as well as other Cup competitions — it's a no-brainer, really. To have that opportunity to play a full year of football, including the pre-season, is so different compared to what we had in Australia.
"We have teams that will get promoted into the WSL. We've played friendlies or Cup fixtures against WSL teams and have competed with them. It just shows that, within England, football from the WSL all the way down is structured so well: anybody can compete with anybody.
"I'm glad to have come here because my football has improved so much. Otherwise, I would have always been like, 'What if I didn't go? What if I didn't try it?'
"The investment in women's football in England is huge. They want everyone to succeed."
Earlier this month, they qualified for the quarter-final of the women's FA Cup for the first time ever.
On Monday morning, they will host Women's Super League powerhouses Manchester United on The Dripping Pan's brand new pitch, which they were able to build thanks to a 750,000 pound grant from the Premier League in recognition of their off-field work.
And while there lingers the question of just how far Lewes FC can climb up the pyramid before they're simply out-resourced by their Premier League-backed competitors, there is no doubt that Lewes' bigger mission is what lies beyond the four white lines.
"This is more than a football match," Copus-Brown said.
"We've only had a handful of big clubs that have come to Lewes before — Chelsea, West Ham, now Manchester United — so it's definitely going to give us a big platform to show who we are and what we stand for.
"As players, we kind of forget that we have such a platform where we can voice change, where we can voice things that need to be voiced, that some people are too scared to talk about.
"If you're at a club where you're the only one who wants to voice how you feel about certain things, it makes it quite difficult to change anything. We can talk about it all we want in the change rooms, but that's not where it happens. You need to say it out loud.
"So being at a club where everyone has the same values and is pushing for the same thing has definitely opened my eyes to the power of football."
