Everton’s humble beginnings in the pioneering days of St. Domingo's FC began in the south east corner of Stanley Park. But by 1882, crowds of over 2,000 began to watch the games, creating problems for the club as it was not allowed to stage fixtures in Stanley Park with crowds of this size. In the search for a new home it was then decided to rent a field at Priory Road from a Mr Cruitt of Coney Green. The Toffees constructed a small stand and a dressing room at Priory Road but the first game played there was a huge disappointment to the club. It was played between a Liverpool representative team and Walsall and yielded gate receipts of just 14 shillings (70p). Things got better and the club's first ever success came on Priory Road when Everton defeated Earlestown in the final of the Liverpool Cup in 1884. However, Everton's cup win had repercussions for them. Mr Cruitt became fed up of the noise and unruly supporters on his land and told the club to find another ground.
Homeless once again, a new search took the Merseysiders to Anfield Road. As with their previous two homes, Everton did not own Anfield; the land was owned by local brewers – the Orrell brothers – who leased it to the club for an annual donation to Stanley Hospital. There was much work to be done to turn the area into a football ground. The club’s officials and players – helped by the fans –took up spades, hammers, nails and barrows and turned what was a pasture on Anfield Road into a playable ground.
In the 1890/91 season, Everton won their first league championship, playing in front of crowds of up to 20,000 but, once again, success soon brought trouble. The ground’s Leaseholder, John Houlding, was now eager to extract more rent in view of the larger crowds the club was attracting. He proposed raising the rent to £250 a year – an increase of 150%.
On January 25, 1892, George Mahon, who had grown tired of Houlding's demands, told members of the club that he had an option to buy Mere Green Field, situated on the north side of Stanley Park. It was described as having 'degenerated from a nursery into a howling desert.' It was to become Everton's new home. It was to become Goodison Park.
Goodison Park was the first major football stadium built in England. Wolves’ Molineux had opened three years earlier but was still relatively undeveloped and Newcastle's St. James's Park opened in 1892, but was little more than a field. Everton performed a miraculous transformation at Mere Green, spending up to £3000 on laying out the ground and erecting stands on three sides. For £552, a Mr Barton prepared the land at 4½d a square yard. The Kelly Brothers of Walton built two uncovered stands, each to hold 4000 people, and a covered stand seating 3000 – at a combined cost of £1,460.
The ground was immediately renamed Goodison Park and was proudly opened on August 24, 1892, by Lord Kinnaird and Frederick Wall of the FA. But instead of a football match the 12,000 crowd saw a short athletics meeting followed by a selection of music and a fireworks display. Everton's first game there was on September 2, 1892, beating Bolton Wanderers 4-2.
Everton’s status as the wealthiest club in England led them to redevelop parts of the ground in 1895. A new Bullens Road was built at a cost of £3,407, despite the original one appearing to be more than adequate, and the open Goodison Road side was covered and a small stand placed on top for a cost of £403.
Goodison Park, as we know it today, started to take shape when Archibald Leitch’s services were enlisted to design a stadium set to become world famous. In 1907 the first side to be completed was the Park End double-decker stand, at a cost of £13,000. Two years later the large Main Stand on Goodison Road was built for a cost of £28,000 and housed all the club offices and players’ facilities. Around the same time, £12,000 was spent on concreting the terracing and constructing a new cinder running track.
The next major development took place in 1926 when £30,000 was spent on another double-decker stand on the Bullens Road side of the ground. Again, Archibald Leach was the architect and he incorporated his now well known criss-cross design on the facia of the stand, which could also be seen at Ibrox Park and Roker Park.
In the 1930s Everton became the first club in England to introduce dugouts, borrowing the idea from Aberdeen following a pre-season friendly. Towards the end of that decade, when the Gwladys Street Stand was developed, Goodison became the first ground in the country to have two-tiered stands on all sides of the ground and was affirmed as the most advanced stadium in Britain.
During the Second World War, Goodison Park suffered quite bad damage – due to its close proximity to the docks at Liverpool – and the club was awarded £5,000 for repairs from the War Damage Commission. After the War, football enjoyed an era of immense popularity and soon after Everton had completed the repairs to the ground, they had their highest ever attendance, 78,299 on September 18, 1948 for the Division One game against Liverpool.
In the late 1950s the ground underwent major modernisation. Not only were floodlights added but an under soil heating system was introduced at great expense, partly due to the pitch having to be dug up just after one season to improve the drainage. The continuous development of Everton's ground meant that it was an obvious choice to host World Cup matches in 1966. In preparation, the club had brought and demolished houses which stood behind the Park End stand in order to make way for a new entrance from Stanley Park. Five matches were held at Goodison Park during the World Cup – the most any ground staged behind Wembley.
Perhaps the most spectacular development at Goodison Park took place in 1971, when the 1909 double-decker main stand on Goodison Road was demolished to make way for a massive new three-tiered one. The old stand had cost £28,000 when it was built and this was considered a huge amount of money, but the new construction was to cost the club £1m and was nearly twice the size. On completion the stand was the largest in the country and remained so until 1974. Due to the sheer size of the new main stand the floodlight pylons had to be taken down and huge lamps put on gantries along the roof. The pitched roof on the Bullens Road stand was replaced by a flatter modern roof and similar floodlight gantries put along here also.
The Safety of Sports Grounds Act of 1977 reduced the capacity of Goodison from 56,000 to 35,000 due mainly to outdated entrances and exits, the club had to pay £250,000 in order to get the capacity back up to 52,800.
In 1987 the old pitched roof over the Gwladys Street stand was replaced with an upturned sloping roof which extended out over terracing below. The new covering joined the one over Bullens Road to form a continuous roof on two sides of the ground.
The next development was to convert Goodison to an all-seater stadium following the Taylor Report and involved seating the paddock, enclosure and the Gwladys Street terracing. The Park End terracing remained but was only used for big games. The reason for this dispensation was that the club were about to redevelop this end of ground anyway. This last development was completed in 1994 and the last standing spectators in Goodison Park were for the FA Cup 3rd round game against Bolton in January of that year. The old stand was then pulled down in February and replaced by a single tier cantilever stand with a capacity of 6,000 and was opened September 17, 1994.
Key Information
Full Name: Goodison Park
Colloquially known as: The Grand Old Lady
Opened: 1892
Cost: £3,000
Capacity: 40,158
|