Goodison Park

1892 was the year that Everton Football Club moved to their current home, Goodison Park, following an acrimonious split with the landlord of their previous ground, John Houlding. Having raised the rent for Anfield Road from £100 to £250 a year in 1889 Houlding also had the sole rights to sell any refreshments inside the ground. The Club’s committee met in May 1889 and it was decided that they should start looking for a new home, there were objections as some members did not want to lose money already invested in fixture and fittings at Anfield. However in 1891 Houlding forced their hand when, after the Club refused to buy the ground for £6,000, he served notice to quit and attempted to form his own club. He succeeded but could not keep the Everton name as the League ruled that Everton Football Club should take their name with them. This then saw the formation of Liverpool Football Club at Anfield Road.

At a meeting in January 1892 a committee member George Mahon, the organist at St Domingo’s, announced that he had option on a field on the north side of Stanley Park, and called Mere Green. It was decided that Everton should become a limited company and with considerable help from another committee member, Dr James Baxter, bought the site for £8,090, a huge price even in those days but at least they were free of Houlding’s tyranny.

Everton’s directors instructed local builders, Kelly Brothers, to have the ground ready for the start of the 1892-93 season. Work started on 7 th June 1892 and was opened on 24 th August 1892 by Lord Kinnaird and Frederick Wall of the FA. Twelve thousand people turned up for opening ceremony of the ground which had miraculously only taken 12 weeks to complete the work.

A total cost of around £3,000 was spent on laying out the ground and erecting stands on three sides. Two uncovered stands each accommodating 4,000 and a covered stand holding 3,000 were built. Along with better accommodation for spectators the ground boasted hot water boilers, large double baths, a referee’s changing room and a press stand. The development meant that Everton had the first major football stadium in England and only Glasgow Rangers in Scotland could boast an earlier ground, opened in 1887, in the whole of Britain.

The ground was immediately renamed Goodison Park and the first match took place on 2 nd September 1892 when Bolton Wanderers were beaten 4-2 in a friendly. The first official game took place the following day when Nottingham Forest drew 2-2 in the first game of the new season. The honour of scoring the first goal at Goodison went to Forest player Horace Pike with Fred Geary equalising to score Everton’s first at their new home.

Everton’s status as the wealthiest club in England led them to redevelop parts of the ground in 1895. A new Bullen’s Road was built at a cost of £3,407, despite the original one appearing to 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 Leach services were enlisted to design a stadium that was to become famous the world over. 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 player facilities. Around the same time £12,000 was spent on concreting the terracing and constructing a new cinder running track.

In recognition of the fact that the ground was by far the best equipped in England, Everton hosted the 1910 Cup Final replay between Newcastle United and Barnsley and 69,000 people attended the game. Then in 1913 Goodison Park became the first league venue to be visited by a ruling monarch, when George V and Queen Mary came to inspect local schoolchildren at the ground. During the First World War the ground was used by the Territorial Army for drill practise and hosted an American baseball exhibition match between Chicago White Sox and New York Giants.

The next Major development took place in 1926 when £30,000 was spent on another double-decker stand was built on the Bullen’s 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 1930’s Everton became the first club in England to introduce dug-outs, borrowing the idea from Aberdeen following a pre-season friendly. Donald Coleman the trainer at Aberdeen had wanted shelter on the touchline he also wanted a better view of how his team was playing.

Another Royal visit took place in 1938 when George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to Everton to witness the opening of the Gwlady’s Street Stand which had just been completed for £50,000, the picture above shows the last house left standing prior to the stand being built. With the opening of the latest stand, Goodison Park became the first ground in England to have double-decker stands on all four sides of the ground and was affirmed as the most advanced stadium in Britain. The picture on the left is a drawing showing the last house standing in Gwlady's Street, the tenent refused to leave and the house had to remain standing until he accepted £25 and, like his neighbour,s moved out.

During the Second World War, Goodison Park suffered quite bad damage due to it’s 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 18th September 1948 for the Division One game against Liverpool.

On 9th October 1957 Everton staged their first ever floodlit game, 58,771 fans turning up to witness the ground illuminated by a series of lights mounted on extremely tall pylons. Liverpool supplied the opposition for the first leg of the Liverpool County FA Anniversary Cup, Everton winning the match 2-0.

A year later another £16,000 was spent on the installation of 20 miles of electric wire under the pitch. The system worked well, melting both frost and ice effectively; however the drains could not handle the extra load. In 1960 the pitch was dug up and new drainage pipes were laid.

England were awarded the World Cup in 1966 and in acknowledgement as the prominent league ground, Goodison Park staged more games than any ground outside of Wembley Stadium. Five games were played including the epic quarter final between Portugal and North Korea and the forgettable semi final between West Germany and Russia. In preparation for the World Cup, Everton had bought and demolished some of the houses which stood behind the Park End Stand in order to make way for a new entrance from Stanley Park.

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 stand. The old stand had cost £28,000 when it was built and this was considered a huge amount of money. The new construction was to cost the club £1,000,000 and was nearly twice the size, on completion the stand was the largest in the country and remained so until 1974 when Chelsea opened their east Stand. 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 Bullen’s 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 Gwlady’s Street stand was replaced with an upturned sloping roof which extended out over terracing below. The new covering joined the one over Bullen’s 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 Gwlady’s 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 re-develop 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 3 rd round game against Bolton in January of that year. The old stand was then pulled down in February and replaced by a single tire cantilever stand with a capacity of 6,000 and was opened 17 th September 1994.

What next, the Grand Old Lady of football stadia is starting to look a bit tired and due to the ground being rather hemmed in by housing there does not seem to be much room for development. Plans have been put forward by fans groups that show ways to virtually rebuild on the existing site and other plans put forward to move to a new home. Which ever comes to fruition anyone who has supported Everton will have great memories, good and bad, of games won and lost at the old ground. So when visiting the stadium just remember.

Goodison Park :

Was the first league ground visited by Royalty
Was the first ground in England to have dug-outs.
Was the first to have double-decker stands on four sides.
Was the first to have under ground heating.
Was the first to have a three tier stand.
Has staged more top fight games than any other.
Is the only league ground to host a world cup semi final
It has staged FA Cup Semi Finals and Finals
It has staged numerous England games
It is the only football stadium in the World to have a church at one corner, St Luke the Evangelist.

And lastly please remember it’s still our home.