Easter Road - History

History

The stadium is named after the Easter Road some 300 metres to its west. The road is not named after Easter the festival, but Easter the compass direction, as evidenced in maps by its counterpart Wester Road (now Bonnington Road). It was the haunt of highwaymen before the area was developed. In April 1604 James Hardie of Bounmylnerig was found guilty of robbing Jacques de la Berge, a Fleming, of his gold and silver on the moor in this location. He was hanged at the Mercat Cross on the Royal Mile.

Hibernian played its first match on the Meadows, on 25 December 1875. The club first moved to the Easter Road area in 1880, to a ground known as Hibernian Park. This location had the advantage of being equidistant between their two main sources of support, the Irish immigrant communities in the port of Leith and the Old Town of Edinburgh. When Hibs suffered financial difficulties in the early 1890s, the lease on Hibernian Park expired and developers started building what would become Bothwell Street. The club was reformed in 1892 and a lease on a piece of land called Drum Park was secured. The site had restricted access from Easter Road, a pronounced slope and was in close proximity to Bank Park, the home of Leith Athletic. There was a sense of continuity from the previous ground, however, and the supporters were keen to get started again. The first match at Easter Road was played on 4 February 1893, a friendly against Clyde.

Easter Road staged its first Scottish League match when Hibs joined the league in 1893. The club was successful in this period, winning the Scottish Cup in 1902 and the league championship in 1903. Despite this success, the club was still apparently looking to move again. Hibs considered relocating to Aberdeen in 1902, a year before Aberdeen F.C. was formed. In 1909, work began on a potential new ground in the Piershill area of Ednburgh, but the North British Railway company won a court order allowing them to build a railway line over the ground. No line was ever built, but Hibs' interest in moving to the site was thwarted. The long term future of Easter Road was only secured in 1922, when the club agreed a 25 year lease on the ground. Two years later, three banks of terraces were raised, while a main stand seating 4,480 people was built on the west side of the ground.

Hibs enjoyed great success in the period immediately after the end of the Second World War, winning three league championships between 1948 and 1952. This led to greater attendances, with the record attendance of 65,860 set by an Edinburgh derby (against Hearts) played on 2 January 1950. This is also a record for any football match played in Edinburgh. As the fans had been tightly packed on the terraces to achieve this record attendance, the size of the East Terrace was increased further. The club even drew up plans to expand the overall capacity to nearly 100,000.

Hibs were one of the first clubs to install corner floodlight pylons, rather than the roof-mounted lights used at Ibrox. The Easter Road floodlights were installed by a local company, Miller & Stables, who would construct similar leaning gantries in many other Scottish grounds. They were first used for an Edinburgh derby played on 18 October 1954. A roof was put over the North Terrace in 1960, but the ground was largely unchanged through the 1960s and 1970s. Hibs became the first club in Scotland to install undersoil heating, in 1980. Benches were installed in the North Terrace in 1982, but this was only because they were cheaper than replacing the terrace barriers. Soon afterwards, Hibs chairman Kenny Waugh admitted that the stadium was a "mess".

The height of the East Terrace was greatly reduced and a roof was erected in the mid-1980s. This work reduced the capacity to 27,000. Hibs was taken over by a consortium led by David Duff in 1987. The new regime spent approximately £1 million on executive boxes and refurbishments, but their policy of diversifying the business into property and public houses crippled the club financially when there was an economic downturn in the late 1980s. Hearts chairman Wallace Mercer attempted a takeover of Hibs in June 1990, with the intention of merging the two major Edinburgh football clubs. The Hibs fans protested against this and Mercer was prevented from gaining the 75% shareholding that was needed to close Hibs.

Sir Tom Farmer took control of Hibs in 1991, but the club was still faced with the need to develop a stadium that would meet the requirements of the Taylor Report. Hibs entered talks with Edinburgh District Council about sharing a new stadium with Hearts, but the proposed site of Ingliston was in the wrong part of the city for Hibs. The club was more interested in the possibility of playing at Meadowbank Stadium, only a few hundred yards from Easter Road, but there were planning difficulties with adapting Meadowbank into a large football stadium.

The reorganisation of the club after Farmer took control meant that there was no real pressure to move, as he also owned Easter Road. The Hibs board made an assessment, however, that the ground could not be renovated in a cost-effective fashion before the August 1994 deadline set by the Taylor Report. Hibs proposed in January 1992 to sell Easter Road and move to a site owned by Farmer in Straiton. Hibs also invited Hearts to share this stadium, as their proposal for a site in Millerhill had been rejected by planners. Those plans were scaled down in 1993 when Lothian Regional Council refused to allow the rest of the Straiton site to be used for commercial development. The Hibs board continued to back the Straiton proposal and they insisted the installation of bucket seats in the uncovered South Terrace was merely to comply with the Taylor Report deadline. This measure also reduced the capacity of Easter Road to 13,500.

Later in 1994, however, the Straiton proposals were abandoned and Easter Road underwent major redevelopment in 1995. Stands behind each goal were built at a cost of £8 million, increasing the capacity to 16,531. The ground was made all seated by the installation of bucket seats in the East Terrace during 1995. Views of the pitch from this stand were somewhat restricted by supporting pillars. The Easter Road slope, which meant that the north end of the pitch was 1.8 metres lower than the south, was removed at the end of the 1999–2000 season. The West Stand was built in 2001 to replace the ageing main stand, increasing capacity to 17,500.

Despite this development work, a move to a shared stadium in Straiton was again proposed in 2003. Hibs hoped that selling the Easter Road site would allow them to clear their debts and reduce costs. Club director Rod Petrie commented that any decision would be based on financial grounds and after consultation with the fanbase, as the club were not being forced to move. Farmer expressed support for further redeveloping Easter Road, if it could be part of a viable business plan. During the consultation, Farmer said that his main priority was ensuring the club's survival and denied that any deal had been concluded. The consultation found that the fans were largely opposed to the Straiton proposal, which the club eventually abandoned. To remove part of the debt, the club sold some land to the east of the stadium that had previously been used for car parking. Selling players, including Steven Whittaker, Scott Brown, Kevin Thomson and Steven Fletcher, also funded these debts and further work.

The club first obtained planning permission to replace the East Stand in 1999, and this was renewed in 2005. Hibs started a consultation with supporters on its redevelopment in 2007. The development was put on hold until sufficient cash resources were obtained to finance the project. The consultation process found that a single tier stand would be most popular with the fans. Petrie announced at the 2009 annual general meeting that the club would enter negotiations with contractors to establish the cost of rebuilding the stand. After these negotiations were concluded, Hibs announced in February 2010 that work would immediately begin on a new East Stand, increasing capacity to 20,421. Demolition of the old stand began in early March, and the stand was opened a month ahead of schedule in August 2010.