Why Sky Blue?

There was a comment on a thread yesterday about clubs shirt colours, with red shirts stemming from socialist clubs where blue were more conservative. This is something I'd never really even thought about to be honest, but in the scraps I had come across I wasn't sure it really applied to City so decided to dig a little deeper. Some of you may have some more knowledge on this so please feel free to contribute as admittedly I haven't spent much time looking into this so far.

William Beastow, with ties to the Ashbury's Lodge, presented the first shirt in 1884 - black, with a white cross. In 1887 the club reformed to Ardwick FC and adopted blue and white stripes similar to Huddersfield. This is where it gets a bit hazy, in 1894 we were saved from financial collapse and resurrected as Manchester City, and given sky, or 'Cambridge' blue has strong ties to the Masons a few have connected the dots. However this was not definitely our shirt colour until 1897-9. 1888-1886 we probably played in variations of blue, although there are reports of an 'all white' kit, which rumor has it turned blue due to a washing detergent used at the time (surely this would have turned the shorts and socks blue too...)

When you think about it sky blue is a pretty uncommon choice for a shirt - abroad you have Lazio, Napoli, so it would probably be worth looking into them at some point. Domestically there is Coventry, who had a director allegedly inspired by our 1950s FA Cup exploits, particularly '55 when we battled with 10 men. They wanted the Coventry team to play with the same spirit, and so had their Sky Blue Revolution in the early 60s. Although this is probably bollox, it's a nice story nonetheless.

Always interesting to look at the early history of the club, if anyone has any recommended reading by all means..