Once an integral part of the towns and cities they called home, dozens of the nation’s Football League grounds have disappeared over the past 30 or so years. All took with them a wealth of memories for generations of supporters. But what happened next? The Athletic has travelled around the country to find out, taking in an array of housing estates, retail parks and even the odd hospital along the way in part one and part two of our series.
The latest update features a selection of clubs who moved around the turn of the Millennium, starting with a stadium where the Premier League trophy was raised in celebration just 20 years ago.
Any railway passenger glancing out of the window on the east-coast line on final approach into London King’s Cross Station could be forgiven for doing a double take.
There, just a few hundred yards in the distance, sits Highbury, the one-time home of Arsenal, which the club left for a new life at the nearby Emirates Stadium in 2006. The East and West Stands still glint in the summer sunshine on this day, leaving football fans of a certain age wondering if the last 18 years have been a dream.
A few seconds later, such a notion is dismissed as the Emirates now hoves into view, towering over the railway line.
Arsenal’s current home makes for an awe-inspiring sight when so close up, even if it also begs the question as to why the ground it replaced is still standing.
An aerial shot, with both Highbury and the Emirates in view (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
The simple answer is: it isn’t. Or, at least, not in a form supporters would recognise. Sure, the skeletal remains of the two art-deco stands, both of them listed buildings, which ran down the two touchlines are still there. But now, luxury apartments can be found where thousands of seats used to be.
The luxury apartments at the old Highbury site (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
All afford a view of the communal garden for residents that sits where Charlie George, Thierry Henry et al once shone. Both the North Bank and Clock End stands at either end of the pitch were demolished following Arsenal’s move three streets away and replaced with more apartments, meaning a site that staged everything from FA Cup semi-finals to Muhammad Ali’s 1966 world heavyweight boxing title win over Englishman Henry Cooper at least retains that four-sided vibe.
The skeletal remains of Highbury’s two art-deco stands remain (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
The nostalgic feel is further bolstered when wandering around the outside of the place, particularly on Avenell Road where the grand facade of the East Stand remains unchanged. The famous marble hall, complete with bust of title-winning manager Herbert Chapman, is still there in the entrance, albeit accessible now only to those who live in one of those apartments.
Swansea City’s Vetch Field could not be more of a contrast to the executive-style living of Highbury.
A ground once so hemmed in on all four sides that it’s still hard to believe the sea is just 300 yards away is now a communal green space, including play area and — appropriately enough, considering the stadium was named after plants (vetch is in the legume family, similar to lentils) that once grew wild on this spot — allotments.
How the Vetch Field looked in 2004 (Pete Norton/Getty Images)
The adjacent prison that once lent Swansea’s home such a foreboding air is still here but now it looks out over a grassed area where the centre circle once stood, planners citing how many fans’ ashes had been scattered on the pitch down the years as reason for preservation.
Swansea left in 2005 to play at the Liberty (now Swansea.com) Stadium, a couple of miles away. But, in this now peaceful enclave, remnants of the old Vetch happily remain. These include a bricked-off entrance gate on Glamorgan Street with ‘East Stand’ written above and an old turnstile, plus a plaque, in Welsh and English, noting the club’s 93 years at a ground that was eventually bulldozed in 2011.
An allotment can be found where the Vetch Field used to be (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
Boothferry Park, Hull, stood vacant even longer, the best part of nine years separating Hull City’s departure and the site finally being flattened. During that time, vandals did their worst, to leave local residents with the police and fire brigade almost on speed-dial.
Nothing remains of a ground whose record crowd, for a visit from Manchester United, stood at 55,000, including the pioneering railway halt that had been built right outside in the early 1950s.
Boothferry Park in 1999 (Michael Steele/Allsport)
Network Rail removed the station in 2007, the same year the supermarket that had been built on half of the North Terrace 35 years earlier closed its doors for the final time. The distinctive six floodlights were the last thing to go in 2011, paving the way for a housing estate appropriately named Boothferry Park Halt.
Those living near Stoke City’s Victoria Ground had to display even more patience following the club’s move to a new 25,000 capacity stadium in 1997. Not only did the site remain a vacant wasteland for nigh on two decades after demolition, despite various plans for housing being mooted but, for a time, it looked like nothing would ever be built where what had once been the oldest operational ground in the Football League stood.
A potential for flooding, as well as the 2008 financial crash, was blamed until, finally, a breakthrough came when the River Trent, that had run under the corner of the Boothen End terrace, was diverted by a property developer.
The river near Stoke’s old Victoria Ground (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
Progress was swift after that, and the site is now home to dozens of families plus a walking trail along the redirected Trent. Former players Paul Ware, Frank Bowyer, Frank Soo and Bob McGrory are commemorated in the street names, while the location of the centre circle is marked by a trio of houses, standing ramrod-straight like a latterday defensive back three.
The house located on the centre circle of Victoria Park (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
The McCain Stadium, Scarborough — or the ‘Theatre of Chips’, as dubbed by locals following a sponsorship deal involving the frozen-food firm — sat empty for the best part of a decade.
A neat, little ground where Chelsea were knocked out of the League Cup in 1989 gradually fell into disrepair after the club folded in 2007, and the vandals had their fun. Relief, of sorts, came when the local council ordered the site to be bulldozed, even though a covenant restricting the land to sports use meant it was still effectively unsellable. This piece of red-tape was snipped in time, meaning the old Athletic Ground, the ground’s official name since being opened in 1898, could finally be sold to the Lidl supermarket chain.
Today, there’s no indication that this is where Neil Warnock cut his managerial teeth in the 1980s, or of the dozen years Scarborough spent in the Football League. There’s not even a plaque to commemorate the seaside town’s infamous first home fixture following promotion from the Conference in 1987, when one Wolverhampton Wanderers fan fell through the roof covering the terracing amid a riot that caused £25,000 of damage.
Happily, though, proceeds from the sale allowed the council to build the Flamingo Land Stadium which Scarborough Athletic, a phoenix club formed in 2007, call home in sixth-tier National League North. The new stadium is just a few hundred yards from the old one and has the gates that once stood at the McCain.
The original gates from the old McCain Stadium still stand (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
Another former Football League town now hosting sixth-tier football is Darlington. They have left not one but two grounds since the start of the 2000s, in a sobering lesson as to what can happen when a club’s owner has delusions of grandeur.
George Reynolds, a convicted safecracker, bought the north-east club in 1999 and immediately targeted the Premier League. He deemed Feethams, the quaint town-centre home where Darlington had played since 1883, too small for those ambitions and started work on a 25,000-capacity stadium on the outskirts.
Named after himself by the ever-modest millionaire, the George Reynolds Arena welcomed Darlington in 2003 but within six months the club had gone into administration. Reynolds later went bust too, and was jailed for three years after being found guilty of tax evasion.
The George Reynolds Arena opened in 2003 (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
Darlington fared little better in a stadium that was far too big for a club who averaged crowds of 1,500 to 2,000. They left the unsustainable — and by now re-named — Darlington Arena in 2012, following two relegations in three years, and today rent Blackwell Meadows, the home of Darlington’s rugby union club.
No clue remains as to Feethams’ footballing history, with the old ground now a housing estate. Only those who recall the days when football and cricket shared the site (the cricket club remains) will perhaps note the twin towers that used to welcome fans of both sports at the entrance.
Only the cricket remains at Feethams (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
To allow better access to the housing estate, these were rebuilt further apart, after the originals had been demolished in 2013. Feethams does live on, though, at Darlington’s present home, thanks to the erection behind one goal of the original ‘Tin Shed’ that used to double as a shelter for the more vociferous football fans in winter and a sightscreen to those playing cricket on the adjoining field during the summer.
Across town, the Arena still hosts sport, albeit rugby union, after being bought by local club Mowden Park. With attendances hovering around the 1,000 mark, however, it remains one of the biggest white elephants in UK sport.
Another move that did not work out came down in Oxford. Having left the Manor Ground in 2001, Oxford United supporters could surely have expected to see out their days at the Kassam Stadium on the southern edge of town.
However, come 2026, the club and their fans will be on the move again, this time to northern suburb Kidlington and a 16,000 capacity new home. Few will shed tears at leaving their three-sided current one, which is still owned by former club chairman Firoz Kassam and has been earmarked for housing once the club’s 25-year lease is up.
This, though, was not the case when leaving the quaint, but cramped, Manor Ground. A private hospital, fittingly named The Manor, now occupies most of the Headington site in the north-east of the city where fans flocked in the 1980s to watch an exciting team not only win the League Cup but spend three years in the top flight. Sir Alex Ferguson’s first game as Manchester United manager ended in defeat there in 1986.
A stucco mural where the Manor Ground stood (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
Other than the hospital’s name, only a stucco mural to the right of the main entrance — called ‘United’ and depicting a crowd scene — indicates the area’s unique history, though there is a plaque commemorating the club being founded as Headington United on the wall of a nearby Britannia Inn hotel.
Coventry City may finally be settled at the Coventry Building Society Arena that has been their ground, on and off and with various sponsors’ names, since leaving Highfield Road in 2001. But it was not always that way, with two enforced stints as tenants at the homes of Northampton Town and Birmingham City leaving many fans understandably nostalgic about their old digs.
The housing and communal grass area on the old Highfield Road site (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
Not that anyone visiting a site just outside the city centre would have much to savour. Kids can still play football in a communal grass area where the pitch once stood. But all around are two- and three-storey houses, distinguished only from the surrounding rows of terraces by their more modern design.
A plaque detailing the area’s history was installed by the developers, but it had been stolen when The Athletic visited. Also missing was the nearby ‘Highfield Road’ street sign, suggesting Coventry has more than its fair share of souvenir hunters.
Highfield Road in 1998 (Allsport/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
No such problem in Leicester, where ‘Lineker Road’ — named after Leicester City’s former goalscorer, 1986 World Cup Golden Boot winner and now Match of the Day presenter Gary — still directs students to their accommodation, which was built on half of what was once Filbert Street.
The last game at Filbert Street in 2002 (Jamie McDonald/Getty Images)
The rest of the land, however, remains empty, an ugly patch of wasteland that couldn’t contrast more with the King Power Stadium that sits just a few hundred yards away. Leicester moved there in 2002, after selling their home of 111 years for £3.75million to a property developer.
Parts of Filbert Street remain an empty wasteland (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
Luxury flats, as well as the students’ block, were touted at the time but, all these years on, a significant chunk of the pitch has run wild, with bushes and even a couple of trees sprouting up.
Much easier on the eye elsewhere in the East Midlands is the housing estate that replaced Derby County’s Baseball Ground. Here, homage is played via not only street names such as Keepers Green and Baseball Drive but also a 14-foot sculpture featuring three footballers.
The sculpture that commemorates the old Baseball Ground (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
It’s an eye-catching structure that sits just 50 yards from a surviving section of red-brick perimeter wall that once funnelled fans towards Brian Clough’s old stomping ground, one of the game’s greats who won his first league title here as Derby manager in 1972.
Clough, left, and his assistant Peter Taylor show off the League Championship trophy at the Baseball Ground in 1972 (PA Images via Getty Images)
Derby left 25 years after that title win under Clough but the stadium continued to host reserve fixtures for another six years before finally being flattened.
The demolition crews were much quicker to get to work on Roker Park, Sunderland. Within weeks of the final game in 1997, the iconic Roker End terrace had gone, followed by the wooden Clock Stand. Not long afterwards, the entire site had been cleared, paving the way for 150 homes to be built.
As in Stoke and Derby, homage is paid via a series of street names, including Clockstand Close, Goalmouth Close, Midfield Drive, Turnstile Mews and Roker Park Close.
A series of street names pay homage to Sunderland’s old Roker Park (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
There’s also Promotion Close, which boasts a stone marker showing where the pitch’s centre spot was. A nice touch for an area that sits just 10 minutes away from the Stadium of Light, Sunderland’s current home, meaning popular fans’ pubs such as The Cambridge and the New Derby Hotel continue to do a decent matchday trade.
Roker Park in 1997 (Stu Forster/Allsport)
Southampton fans had only a small window to say ‘goodbye’ to The Dell in 2001. Just six weeks after the curtain had come down on more than a century of history with a 1-0 win over Arsenal, demolition work was complete.
Not everything went to plan, however, with a controlled explosion to bring down two of the floodlights failing in front of an invited audience of civic leaders and club staff. Only after a two-hour delay did the desired toppling take place, much to the relief of the firm from neighbouring south-coast city Portsmouth, home to Southampton’s arch rivals, which was handed the task of flattening the stadium.
The Dell in 1998 (Chris Ison – PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
“The ground has shown a bit more resistance than the team,” quipped one of the Portsmouth-supporting workers, by way of saving face.
Around 100 homes quickly went up, with individual blocks named after legendary Southampton figures such as 1976 FA Cup winner Bobby Stokes and Matt Le Tissier, the scorer of the final goal at a ground renowned for its intimate atmosphere. There’s also a Crossley Place, suggesting one of the developers might also have been a rival fan, with Mark Crossley the only goalkeeper to have saved a Le Tissier penalty in a league match here in 1993.
The ‘no through road’ has to be a mischievous nod to that save?
Concluding this leg of our tour is Maine Road, Manchester, once the largest club stadium in the country.
Like Arsenal’s historic Highbury, it was a regular cup semi-final venue. Today, though, there’s nothing left of Manchester City’s old home, replaced by a housing estate called Maine Place that features a crescent called Blue Moon Way.
Maine Road, pictured in 2001 (Alex Livesey/Allsport/Getty Images)
A rectangular patch of grass sits where the centre spot was until 2003, when the club moved to the Etihad Stadium, while street names featuring former greats such as Malcolm Allison, Joe Corrigan, Shaun Goater and Uwe Rosler are a further nod towards the past.
The surrounding roads where local kids would chirp, “Mind your car, mister?” at visiting motorists on a matchday — and woe betide those who didn’t pay up! — remain, but many of the businesses sustained by the football are long gone, including all but one of the 19 pubs that once served thirsty City fans.
Where the centre spot used to be at Maine Road (Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
As the Eithad complex across town continues to grow — a new £365million music arena was opened this year — and the trophies pile up under Pep Guardiola’s management, City’s old home area of Moss Side feels forgotten in comparison.
Forgotten, that is, by all but the generations of City fans who once called this corner of south Manchester home.
(Top photos: Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletic)
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