I wrote this a few years ago, thought some of you might enjoy the read -
"When, in 1899, Wednesday decided to move to a ten acre plot in Owlerton, they were taking a huge gamble. Back then Owlerton was still very much open countryside, almost unrecognisable from the present day suburb that has a population nearing 10,000. There was very little in the way of public transport, with most fans having to make the two mile trek from the city on foot, and to make matters worse, Wednesday had been relegated from the First Division for the first time since joining the league in 1892 - Sheffield United on the other hand were battling at the top end of the First Division and offered the only top flight football in Yorkshire. But then, as now, the Wednesdayites remained loyal, and attendance figures during the first season at their new home were even higher than they were at Olive Grove.
Wednesday had had to move from their city centre home after the Midland Railway Company, who co-owned the land, announced they would be needing the area for themselves from the summer of 1899. During the Blades' last season at Olive Grove, many different plots on which to build a new home were explored, with a field near Carbrook proving the most popular among fans. But in April 1899 the board announced that due to financial constraints the club would instead be moving to Owlerton, with the last ever Olive Grove game coming just a week later. There was to be no fairy tale ending for the old ground - Wednesday, having had relegation confirmed during the week, lost 1-3 to Newcastle United.
In the summer of 1899, Owlerton was a hive of activity, with contractors working double time to ensure a ground fit to host league football would be ready by the 2nd of September, when Chesterfield Town were due to visit for the first game of the new season. With little money available after the purchase of the land, it was decided by the board that the cheapest option when considering the building of the ground was to take the main stand from Olive Grove with them, brick by brick, and re-build it along the southern side of the pitch, backing onto the banks of the River Don. It was a novel idea, and a popular one with the fans who had watched Wednesday at their former home over the course of the previous decade. The impending construction of a new North Stand however meant that the Olive Grove structure was only ever intended to be a makeshift main stand. All the same it was the only one open to the public come the first game of the season. The builders had worked wonders getting the ground up to the required standard to host first class football, with perhaps the most important job of all being the leveling of the playing surface, which to this day still has a pronounced downward slope from west to east.
Construction on the new North Stand took longer than the one on the south side of the ground, and wasn't fully opened until the turn of the new century, when Bolton Wanderers were beaten in front of over 12,000 spectators - nearly half of them watching on from the impressive new main stand. Despite not stretching the full length of the pitch (though straddling the half-way line), the enclosure was big enough to hold the dressing rooms and a cafe in the area beneath the seating, and was built fifteen feet from the touchline to allow for standing space by the pitchside. By 1903 this bank was covered with concrete terracing and roofed, and the whole north side of the ground remained more or less untouched for another 57 years.
Attendances during that first season were expected to be low owing to the longer journey from the city centre and relegation from the top tier of league football, but as previously mentioned, Wednesdayites turned out in great numbers, and the need for constructing other stands behind the goal areas became a necessity. It had originally been intended that the east and west ends would simply be banked with earth and left for standing room, but in October 1899, just a month after the first match had been played at Owlerton, work began on a new West Stand which would eventually stretch around the corner of the pitch and meet up with the North Stand. On the eastern side of the ground, the Spion Kop (named after the scene of a famous battle during the Boer War) remained the least developed of the four sides of Owlerton during the early 20th century, and during the first few seasons there was nothing but a small hill for spectators to stand on.
After two league championship wins and an FA Cup triumph during the 1900's, the Owls' reputation as a major club saw bigger and bigger crowds entering the turnstiles, with attendance records being smashed on a regular basis (during the 1912/13 season there were four 30,000+ crowds). The ground, steadily gaining a reputation as one of the best around, hosted its first major game not involving Wednesday in 1912, when Blackburn Rovers beat West Bromwich Albion in an FA Cup semi-final replay. It soon became evident that a flurry of ground improvements were needed to match the club's ambition both on and off the pitch.
The first such change came in the summer of 1913, when the old Olive Grove stand by the River Don was dismantled for a second time and sold for scrap, paving the way for a new state of the art enclosure stretching the full length of the pitch to be built. Renowned stadium architect Archibald Leitch was paid £500 to design the new stand, and when it was opened for the first time on the first day of the new season (albeit without a roof - not to be fully built until November), it was agreed all round that it was just about the finest of its kind in the country. The breath-taking new structure housed the boardroom, changing rooms and even baths, and took over as the main stand at Owlerton, a capacity it has retained ever since. The other improvement to take place in the immediate years preceding the outbreak of the First World War was the work undertaken on the Kop (to this day some fans still prefer to call to the stand the East Bank or East Stand), in 1914. The bank was enlarged, covered with concrete terracing, and extended to stretch around the north-east corner and meet up with the North Stand.
The Great War of course was just around the corner, and would last for four long years, during which time legendary secretary Arthur Dickinson performed miracles in keeping the club alive - simply fielding a team in the numerous war league matches became a challenge. When the Armistice was signed in November 1918, Wednesday were in severe trouble, both on the pitch and financially, and suffered possibly their most catastrophic season ever on their return to league football, being relegated with a handful of games still remaining. This downward turn put on hold any need to further improve the Hillsborough ground (re-named after the pre-war developments), or increase the capacity - despite the fact that for the second time in the clubs history average gates rose for the season following relegation. The Owls would spend six seasons in the doldrums of Division Two during the early 1920's, but the club's home ground certainly wasn't regarded as second class, hosting two more FA Cup semi-finals and a full international between England and Scotland during the Owls' stay in the Second Division.
Before the dust had even settled on Wednesday's promotion celebrations of 1926, more work was being planned for the stadium. The roof that had been put up around the north west terrace in the 1900's was taken down in 1927 and replaced by a small new stand built parallel to the North Stand. This work created room for a brand new West Stand to be built a year later which would boost both the covered and non-covered accommodation by more than double the previous figure - meaning that at the time more than a quarter of the ground's capacity was under cover.
Following the fantastic improvements seen at Hillsborough over the opening decades of the 20th century it was perhaps no surprise that there would be no need for further major upgrades at the ground for another thirty years. The outbreak of the Second World War and the subsequent financial hardship suffered in the footballing world meant that Wednesday, with a more than adequate home venue, needn't worry about spending what little money they had on improving their stadium.
It wasn't until 1960, when Hillsborough was confirmed as a venue to host World Cup matches six years later, that plans were put in place to upgrade the stadium, by now a regular FA Cup semi-final venue and labeled by many as the 'Wembley of the North'. The first and biggest development seen was ready as early as 1961, and saw the oldest remaining structure at the ground, the North Stand built during the very first season at Owlerton, taken down and replaced by a stunning structure that at the time seemed from another planet. The first cantilever roofed football stand in England to stretch the full length of a football pitch (the 1927 north-west stand was removed to make room), the new enclosure would hold 10,000 seated spectators, and at the time of its opening was the biggest single tier stand in Europe to be all-seater. To this day it remains a favourite of football fans and architects alike - it is the only football stand in the country to be mentioned in author Sir Nikolaus Pevsner's guide books on the subject, collectively seen by many as the architectural bible.
With three sides of the ground now under cover and the main stands fully seated (the terracing at the front of the south stand was replaced with seats in the summer of 1965), it would perhaps have made sense to redevelop the Kop next, but instead the relatively new West Stand was taken down to be replaced by a bigger structure holding just shy of 5,000 seats, built on the exact spot of its predecessor, again leaving room in front for terracing. The icing on the cake as far as Hillsborough's preparations for the World Cup was concerned was the building of a new sports hall behind the North Stand that would be used as a temporary press room and cafeteria for the duration of the competition. Hillsborough's hosting of four games during the tournament, including a quarter-final match between Uruguay and eventual finalists West Germany, was a huge success, and upheld the grounds reputation as a world class venue fit to host the biggest of matches, a reputation that would be sustained for decades to come. Incidentally, one more development at the ground during the 1960's was the building of a new corner stand adjoining the new North and West stands. The construction wasn't actually finished until 1967, but fans had been stood on the terrace as early as the World Cup a year earlier - the health and safety authorities of the 1960's obviously having no problem accommodating football fans on a half-built stand!
As with the flurry of changes during the 1920's, the refurbishment of Hillsborough during the 1960's meant that there was simply no need for further improvements over the course of the coming years, especially during the 1970's when Wednesday suffered a disastrous downturn in fortunes that caused home attendances to fall to the lowest levels the club had ever seen. On a number of occasions during the mid-1970's, Hillsborough, which was still a regular FA Cup semi-final venue, was barely 20% full for Wednesday home games. After years of painful decline, the Owls finally embarked on the long road back to the top after the inspirational appointment of Jack Charlton as first team manager.
Within just a few short years the Owls were back in the top flight, and by 1986 plans were afoot to finally begin work on the least developed stand at the ground - the Spion Kop. The first job was to level off the back of the stand by installing new terracing, which in turn would allow for the second phase of the construction - the roofing of the last uncovered part of the stadium. The structure, costing nearly £1m and held up by four supporting pillars, was ready in time for the first game of the 1986/87 season, and with a capacity of well over 20,000, was now easily the largest covered terrace in European football. Officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in December 1986, the Kop was filled to its new capacity on just a handful of occasions in the three years before the Hillsborough Disaster (see below), and due to the recommendations of the Taylor Report the amount of tickets that could be sold for the stand decreased by more than 25%.
The afore-mentioned disaster at the Leppings Lane end of the ground in 1989 would have huge repercussions with regard to football stadia up and down the country - in the immediate aftermath the terracing on the lower tier, the scene of the tragedy itself, was closed for two years, only reopening at the start of the 1991/92 with the installation of 2,500 new plastic tip-up seats to be covered by a new £500,000 roof.
The disaster well and truly shattered the image of Hillsborough being the 'Wembley of the North', and the process of re-building the reputation of the ground would take many a year. Despite hosting one more FA Cup semi-final in 1992 it was evident that changes were needed, especially when Hillsborough was chosen as one of eight grounds to host the European Championships in 1996. Just hours after the end of the 1991/92 season, work began on bringing the South Stand up to the standards required by UEFA to host a major championship - the project was to be split into two phases, the first of which would see the old roof taken down and a new one, almost twice as big and stretching back to the Don, built on top. The new structure would be held up by the longest single span steel girder in the country, offering an uninterrupted view of the playing surface from every seat. The roof's pièce de résistance would undoubtedly be the incorporation of the original clock face and finial into the final design.
The second phase of the South Stand project wouldn't begin until the summer of 1995, and in the meantime the last parts of the ground to still be terraced, the Kop and North-West stands, were fitted with seating. The seating of the Kop was unpopular amongst Wednesdayites who felt the ground would never be the same again, but it was a decision very much out of the club's hands. In the wake of the Disaster, the Taylor Report had recommended that all top-flight grounds be all-seater and the government agreed, insisting all top-flight grounds be made all-seater by the start of the 1994/95 season.
Despite Hillsborough now being terrace-free for the first time in its history, even the most ardent advocate for standing room had to admit the ground was starting to look the part, and by the time Denmark and Portugal met for the grounds first game of the European Championships in early June, Hillsborough had finally regained its place as one of the country's top sporting venues. Work on the second phase of the South Stand re-development had continued right the way through the 1995/96 season, and focused mainly on the building of a 3,000 capacity Grandstand to fit between the new roof and the old 1913 stand - the mixing of old and new intended to take the ground into the 21st century while still maintaining the character and heritage that has made it so famous. The main stand now houses executive boxes, suites and function rooms, a press box and the main reception.
The work undertaken during the 1990's mirrored the re-developments of the 1960's when the team was more often than not at the very top of the English footballing strata, but, just like thirty years previously, the end of the decade brought new challenges, and after relegation right at the beginning of the new century, ground improvements hurtled down the list of the clubs priorities as it built up debts of over £25m. In any case, attendances of over 30,000 during the first decade of the new millennium were few and far between and the need for an expansion in the ground's capacity was next to zero.
It wasn't until 2009 that the subject of renovating the stadium again came into fresh focus. With the Football Association submitting an ultimately frutiless bid to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the Owls board drew up plans to yet again re-develop the ground into one of the top sporting venues in the country. The main aims were to build a new tier on top of the existing West Stand and build a new stand in the north-east corner of the ground, connecting the North Stand and Kop together. The ground was provisionally chosen to host World Cup football by the FA, ahead of Bramall Lane, but England's bid failed, and the re-development of the Owls' home was seemingly put on hold.
But even today, Hillsborough remains a favourite of football fans up and down the country - Simon Inglis, in his book 'Football Grounds of Great Britain' wrote that Hillsborough "...on a crisp, autumn afternoon remains one of the quintessential joys of English sport". Yet despite its reputation as one of the more aesthetically pleasing stadiums in world football, the name 'Hillsborough' will forever be linked to the tragic events of April 1989. Lord Justice Taylor's report on the disaster, and the treatment of football fans at grounds in general, recommended sweeping changes at all major football grounds in order to ensure the safety and comfort of all spectators. Ironically however, due to Wednesday's financial problems at the turn of the new millennium, Hillsborough has ultimately proven to be one of the least changed grounds in the country - apart from the South Stand renovation in 1995 the ground looks almost exactly the same as it did on that fateful day in 1989.
Many clubs chose to abandon their stadium altogether and re-locate to new, purpose built modern stadia, many of which were built with the same design layout - identical stands stretching all the way around the perimeter of the pitch. Although these grounds are built in such a way as to offer the best possible views of the action, the lack of character the stadia have to offer has led to many using the derogatory term 'soul-less bowl' when referring to them, indeed many are all but identical except for the colour of the seats. Although Hillsborough is well over a century old and showing signs of age, its four unique stands and lasting character means it remains one of the most beloved and hallowed football stadiums around, and to Wednesdayites, a second home."
Also, I made this a while ago - I dream of doing a 3D version one day -
http://gifmaker.cc/PlayGIFAnimation.php?folder=20150216104f9oANMAMT51of0sNHc64v&file=output_yZKOUN.gif