Villa Park - History

History

The Aston Lower Grounds, later renamed Villa Park, was not the first home of Aston Villa F.C. Their previous venue, the Perry Barr ground faced increasing problems including a lack of access and exorbitant rents. As a result, in 1894, Villa's committee began negotiations with the owners of the Aston Lower Grounds, "the finest sports ground in the district." Situated in the former grounds of Aston Hall, a Jacobean stately home, the Lower Grounds had seen varied uses over the years. Originally the kitchen garden of Aston Hall's owner Sir Thomas Holte, the man who gave his name to the Holte End stand, it later became a Victorian amusement park complete with aquarium and great hall. The current pitch stands on the site of the Dovehouse Pool, an ornamental pond drained in 1889. In place of the pool the owners of the Lower Grounds built a cycle track and sports ground that opened on 10 June 1889 for a combined cycling and athletics event that drew an estimated crowd of 15,000. Negotiations continued for two years before the Villa committee reached agreement with the site's owner, Edgar Flower, to rent the Lower Grounds for £300 per annum on a 21-year lease with an option to buy the site at any point during the term. The committee immediately engaged an architect who began preparing plans for the site, which included construction of a new 440 yards (400 metres) cement cycle track to replace the existing cinder one. The main stand was to be built to the east on the Witton Lane side, with the track and pitch fully enclosed by banking. Construction of the final phase of the stadium began in the winter of 1896 following negotiations with contractors over the price. Several months behind schedule, the almost-complete stadium finally opened on 17 April 1897. The process of fixing issues with the building work would continue for a number of months thereafter. As built, the stadium could house 40,000 spectators, most of whom would stand in the open on the banking. The first match at the ground, a friendly against Blackburn Rovers, took place on 17 April 1897, one week after Aston Villa had completed the League and FA Cup 'Double'.

After winning the league championship in 1899, Villa's record-breaking average crowd of 21,000 allowed the club to invest in a two-stage ground improvement programme. The first stage extended the terrace covering on the Trinity Road side at a cost of £887 while the second cost £1,300 and involved re-laying all terracing around the track to remedy a design flaw that caused poor sightlines for the majority of the crowd. In 1911, Villa bought the freehold of the ground for £8,250, the office buildings in the old aquarium and car park area for £1,500 and the carriage drive and bowling green for £2,000. This was the first stage in plans drawn up by ambitious Villa director Frederick Rinder, that would see the capacity of Villa Park increased to 104,000. In June 1914, another phase of enhancements began at Villa Park to compete with improvements at other grounds around the country, including Everton's Goodison Park, where a new two-tiered stand had just been completed. The first stage of improvements saw the cycling track removed, new banking at the Holte Hotel End (Holte End) and a re-profiling of all the terracing to bring it closer to the newly squared-off pitch. Rinder turned to the renowned architect Archibald Leitch to design a new Villa Park. Their joint plans included large banked end stands at the Holte and Witton ends and the incorporation of the original Victorian Lower Grounds buildings, including the aquarium and the newly acquired bowling greens. The outbreak of the First World War severely hampered design and construction efforts.

As a result of the worsening economic situation, 1919 quotes for the implementation of the pre-war construction plans came to £66,000, compared to the 1914 quote of £27,000. By March 1922 this price had reduced to £41,775 and the directors pushed ahead with the plans for the new Trinity Road Stand. Construction began in April 1922 with the stand partially opened in August that year. Construction continued throughout the 1922–23 season with the stand officially opened on 26 January 1924 by the then Duke of York, later King George VI. He commented to Rinder that he had "no idea that a ground so finely equipped in every way—and devoted to football—existed." On completion the Trinity Road Stand was considered one of the grandest in Britain, complete with stained glass windows, Italian mosaics, Dutch gables in the style of Aston Hall and a sweeping staircase. Several commentators including Simon Inglis consider it to be Leitch's masterpiece, described in 1960 by a Sunday Times reporter as the "St Pancras of football." The final cost of the stand and associated 1922–24 ground developments was calculated at £89,000, a sum that enraged the club's directors who ordered an investigation into cost and in 1925 forced the resignation of Rinder.

Villa Park was to remain in much the same state for another 30 years with no major developments until the late 1950s. During the 1930s the earth and timber terraces with wooden crash barriers were completely replaced by concrete terracing and metal barriers, a process first begun by Rinder. In 1936 he was voted back onto the board at the age of 78 after the club were relegated to the Second Division. Nearly 25 years after he had created his 1914 masterplan, Rinder resurrected it and looked to carry out the third phase of his developments. He died in December 1938 after Leitch who had died in April 1938, leaving his construction business to his son, Archibald Junior. The complete redevelopment and extension of the Holte End began in early 1939 supervised by Archibald Junior. When the Second World War broke out in September 1939, all construction across the country stopped. Unusually, given the austerity measures in place at the time, Villa acquired a special permit to continue construction of the Holte End; Simon Inglis notes "How they achieved this is not recorded." Work on the ground was completed by April 1940 and the stand was immediately mothballed as Villa Park switched to its war time role. The Trinity Road Stand became an air-raid shelter and ammunition store while the home dressing room became the temporary home of a rifle company from the 9th Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment. German bombs caused £20,000 worth of damage to the Witton Lane Stand, which was not remedied until 1954.

Apart from running repairs and fixing bomb damage, no major projects were undertaken until 1958–59 when four projects were announced. As a result, the old Bowling Green pavilion on the Trinity Road became a medical centre, the basement of the aquarium building was converted into a gym, four large floodlight pylons were installed and a training ground was purchased 500 yards (460 metres) from Villa Park. The floodlights were first used in November 1958 for a friendly match against the Scottish side Heart of Midlothian. In the summer of 1962, £40,000 was spent on a roof for the Holte End, the first to provide cover for the ordinary terrace fans at Villa Park since 1922. The old barrel-shaped roof on the Witton Lane Stand, the only remaining feature of the 1897 Villa Park, was removed in the summer of 1963 and replaced with a plain sloping roof in the same style as the Holte End. Villa Park was chosen by FIFA to host three matches for the 1966 World Cup on the condition that the Witton Lane Stand became all-seater. The players' tunnel also required covering with a cage while the pitch was to be widened by 3 yards (2.7 metres). Regular ground developments and innovations began in the summer of 1969 under the direction of the new chairman, Doug Ellis, who set about redeveloping Villa Park for the modern era. Much of the stadium had fallen into various states of disrepair and was in need of modernisation. Ellis updated the infrastructure, installed a new public address system, carried out plumbing work, which included installing new toilets, resurfaced the terraces and built a new ticket office. His tenure also saw executive lounges replace the old offices in the Trinity Road Stand.

Redevelopment of the Witton End stand began in the summer of 1976. The stand had not seen any major work since 1924 and its rear remained a mound of earth. Initial renovations saw the levelling of the earthen mound and new concrete terraces constructed on the lower tier in preparation for the construction of an upper tier. Stage two began in February 1977 and was officially opened in late October that year. The stand's design and fittings were impressive for the time, including novelties such as an 'AV' logo spelled out in coloured seats and a double row of executive boxes. As well as the new Witton End stand, renamed the North Stand, Villa Park went through further renovations throughout the ground. The cost of the work was £1.3 million. As a result and as with the construction of the Trinity Road Stand fifty years earlier, Villa were again burdened with debt. An internal investigation found that £700,000 of the £1.3 million worth of bills were unaccounted for. A later report by accountants Deloitte Haskins & Sells found that the bills were inflated by only 10% but that there were "serious breaches of recommended codes of practice and poor site supervision."

In response to the Hillsborough disaster, the Taylor Report of August 1989 mandated that all major stadia be converted to become all-seater as a safety measure. During the summer of 1990, the first changes were made to comply with the report's requirements. The North Stand saw the addition of 2,900 seats to the lower tier of the stand in place of terracing, the Holte End's roof was extended in preparation for more seats, the Trinity Road Stand had its roof replaced and the Witton Lane Stand had more corporate boxes added. By that time, all four floodlight pylons had been removed to make way for boxes or in preparation for seating and new floodlights were installed on new gantries on the Trinity and Witton stands. In February 1992, the club's application to the Council for permission to demolish the Holte Hotel was rejected. After several months of negotiations, Villa gained permission for a new stand to replace the Witton Lane Stand. The new design meant that the club had to realign Witton Lane and, as a condition of the planning permission, pay £600,000 to compulsory purchase the houses along Witton Lane and upgrade the road from a B to an A road, as well as moving its utilities. The stand was fully operational by January 1994 at a cost of £5 million with 4,686 seats, which brought Villa Park up to a capacity of 46,005. It was announced at the 70th birthday gala of chairman Doug Ellis that the stand was to be renamed the "Doug Ellis Stand", a move that caused some controversy among Villa fans with some still referring to it as the Witton Lane Stand. Nevertheless, during the 1993–94 season, the newly rebuilt Witton Lane Stand became the Doug Ellis Stand. The Holte End was the only remaining stand that did not meet the Taylor Report requirements and a structural survey revealed that putting seats onto the existing terracing would be uneconomical. Instead the decision was taken to build a new stand consisting of two tiers, just four years after construction of the new roof. The demolition of the stand began on the last day of the 1994 season. Its replacement began to open in August 1994 with 3,000 seats in the lower tier occupied for the first seating-only game at Villa Park. By December the same year it was fully operational and had a capacity of 13,501 seats, bringing the Villa Park capacity to 40,310. Upon completion, the Holte was the largest single end stand in Britain.

The next development at Villa Park was the Trinity Road Stand in 2000. It had stood since 1922 though it had seen a number of renovations and additions since. The demolition of the old stand began after the last game of the 1999–2000 season, an event met with an element of sadness from observers such as Simon Inglis who stated that "the landscape of English football will never be the same." The new stand was much larger and more spacious than the old one, taking Villa's capacity from 39,399 to its present 42,788. It was officially opened in November 2001 by HRH The Prince of Wales, just as the old stand had been opened by his grandfather George VI, 77 years earlier, when he was still the Duke of York.