City that scored biggest crowds
QUESTION Did Glasgow once have the world’s three largest sports stadiums? Can any other city compare?
GLASGOW has been a city of football since the early days of the game. By the early 1900s, it had the three biggest football grounds in the world — Hampden Park, Ibrox stadium and Celtic Park, which even then had a combined capacity of more than 200,000.
as well as being scotland’s national ground, Hampden Park was originally home to Queen’s Park, the oldest football club in scotland, founded in 1867.
By the 1930s the crowds were vast. a 1937 scotland v England fixture attracted a European record crowd of 149,415. scotland ran out 3-1 winners.
The following week, 147,365 packed into Hampden for the scottish Cup Final where Celtic took on aberdeen. This match set two more records for Hampden Park — the largest ever attendances for both a European domestic game and a national cup final anywhere in the world. Celtic won 2-1.
Rangers’ Ibrox had a record attendance for a league match of 118,567 in a fixture against old Firm rivals Celtic, and Celtic Park had a record of 83,500 for the reverse fixture in 1938.
london has had more big stadiums but can’t compare with these numbers. wembley’s record attendance (at the old stadium) was 126,047 in 1923 for the Fa Cup Final.
The largest-ever attendance was at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. officially, 173,850 watched Brazil v Uruguay in the 1950 world Cup ‘Final’ (it was the last game in a four-team final group) but 199,854 is generally given.
Eddie Marsh, Manchester.
QUESTION Why do people scratch their heads when encountering a problem they find difficult to solve?
PSYCHOLOGISTS believe that headscratching is a form of displacement activity. where an animal experiences conflicting emotions or motivations, it will perform some unrelated behaviour. This can relieve stress or act as a warning. Examples include head scratching, grooming, pacing, fidgeting and procrastination. Comfort eating, comfort shopping, excessive cleaning or exercise and scrolling through a mobile phone may also work in the same way.
such behaviours may act as a warning to keep clear. a 2017 study at Portsmouth University found that macaques scratch their heads when stressed, and this makes other macaques less likely to approach or harass them.
Tim Prees, Reading, Berks.
QUESTION Are any of Britain’s towns and cities named after plants?
PLACES need a distinctive feature for identification and the name often refers to vegetation or habitat. They may give an indication of what the environment was historically like in a particular area.
Take nettles, for example; these flourish in phosphate-rich soil in areas long occupied by humans and animals. Thus we have Nettlebed in oxfordshire, and Nettleham and Nettleton in lincolnshire.
Native trees such as oak, beech, birch and field maple occur frequently. There are a host of places with the prefix ‘oak’; oakham in Rutland, oakengates in shropshire, and several instances of oakley — in Buckinghamshire, Hampshire, suffolk and Fife. Great oaks were often used as boundary markers, so they are particularly common.
Beech, maple and birch occur in names such as Beech in staffordshire; Cowbeech in East sussex, Maple Cross in Hertfordshire, Maplehurst in west sussex, Mapleton in Derbyshire, Birchington in Kent and Birch in lancashire.
apple is found in appleford, appleby, apperley and particularly in the compound appleton — a name ending in ‘ton’ typically means a farmstead or village. Jim Beddoes, Oxford.
IN LONDON alone there are many. working west to east, north of the river we have Ruislip — from an anglosaxon name meaning ‘where the rushes grow’ on the River Pinn, Northwood is a wood to the north of Ruislip, Cricklewood means ‘wood with an uneven edge’ and st John’s wood was a forest owned by the Knights of st John.
Royal oak was named after a pub, which in turn was named after the great oak at Boscobel House in shropshire that sheltered Charles II. shepherd’s Bush was a resting place for sheep farmers on the way to smithfield market, Muswell Hill means ‘Mossy well’ and Gospel oak is named after a boundary oak.
Primrose Hill has an obvious etymology, as does Covent Garden — the garden of a convent. wood Green was part of Tottenham wood, the arnold family owned arnos Grove and the seven sisters were an ancient tuft of elm trees.
Epping Forest is an ancient woodland that still covers much of the area; Forest Gate is its southern entrance.
Fairlop was a once-famous oak tree called the ‘ Fair lop’. an 18th- century description explains: ‘about a yard from the ground, where its rough fluted stem is thirty- six feet in circumference, it divides into eleven vast arms; yet not in the horizontal manner of an oak, but rather in that of a beech.
‘Beneath its shade, which overspreads an area of three hundred feet in circuit, an annual fair has long been held, on the 2nd of July; and no booth is suffered to be erected beyond the extent.’
The tree, in what is now the london borough of Redbridge, was eventually destroyed in 1820.
south of the river we have Collier’s wood, a wood used by charcoal-burners, and Dulwich, which is anglo-saxon for ‘dill meadow’. Penge is a Celtic word meaning ‘edge of the wood’. Bromley is anglo- saxon, meaning ‘ a clearing where broom trees grow’.
Francesca Page, London NW8.