The football Grounds now long gone
WE step back to a very different football world and revisit some of Tyneside’s vanished grounds. All is quiet now where crowds – big and small – would once gather to watch matches in the early, pre-commercialised days of the game.
Back in time, our lost grounds were located in South Shields, Gateshead, North Shields and Newcastle where, in the city’s East End, at Byker and Heaton, the team that would eventually become Newcastle United first competed in the latter decades of the 19th century.
■South Shields AFC’s Horsley Hill Stadium, c1930
South Shields FC are currently and successfully plying their trade in the Northern Premier League’s Premier Division – and in 2017 they lifted the FA Vase. They play their home games at the swish, 3,500-capacity Mariners Park sitting near the border of South Shields and Jarrow.
But back in time, between 1919 and 1930, a former incarnation of the club, South Shields AFC, played at the 25,000-capacity Horsley Hill Stadium.
And they played league football in Division Two, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea – while fielding a full England international.
By today’s standards, the club enjoyed some incredible results during the inter-war years.
On September 22, 1923, South Shields beat Man United 1-0 at Horsley Hill. They even finished above United in the league that season.
In another season, Shields beat Chelsea 5-1, and won 2-1 at Man City.
Home gates during the 1920s averaged around 15,000, with the record attendance being 25,641.
South Shields even boasted a player called Warney Cresswell who won the first of his seven full England caps while playing for the Seasiders.
But money was tight and, caught in between Newcastle United and Sunderland, South Shields were always going to find it hard.
Time after time they were forced to sell their best players and Cresswell was flogged to Sunderland.
In 1930, the club folded and moved lock, stock and barrel to Gateshead. Today Horsley Hill Stadium is long gone and a housing estate is built on the site.
■Dilapidated Redheugh Park, the
recently-closed home to Gateshead football club, 1971
■Redheugh Park, in the heart of the town’s Teams area, played host to one-time football league club Gateshead for over 40 years.
With the shadow of Newcastle United looming large across the Tyne, Gateshead’s time here was marked by plenty of ups and downs, and everpresent financial problems.
The club’s first season was in 1930 when cash-strapped South Shields FC moved up-river and set up shop as the newly-formed Gateshead FC.
The first game, in the old Third Division North, attracted a massive crowd of 17,000, while a record 20,752 fans would watch them play Lincoln in 1937. The club’s finest hour saw them reach the quarter-finals of the FA Cup in 1953, when they lost narrowly to Bolton Wanderers and the mighty Nat Lofthouse at Redheugh Park.
Sadly, there would be struggles as well. In 1960, they controversially failed to gain re-election to the league, and the last six decades has seen the club competing in various Northern non-league divisions.
In 2014, Gateshead agonisingly missed out on a return to the Football League when they lost to Cambridge in the Skrill play-off final at Wembley.
Today the club competes in the National League North and plays its games at Gateshead International Stadium. At Redheugh Park, the last football was kicked there in 1971, before the ground was bulldozed the following
year. The area was completely flattened for the 1990 Gateshead Garden Festival. Appropriately, there is still a football pitch on the site and a five-a-side soccer centre nearby.
■Appleby Park, home of North Shields FC, in the 1970s
Back in 1969, the season when
Newcastle United lifted the InterCities Fairs Cup, another side from the north bank of the Tyne won the FA Amateur Cup at Wembley.
It too was a splendid occasion with 74,000 present beneath the Twin Towers to witness North Shields come from a goal down to defeat Sutton United 2-1.
They boasted a famous manager, Frank Brennan, who had twice captured the FA Cup on the same Wembley turf, playing as Newcastle
United’s rock-solid centre-half in the 1950s. However, dark days lay ahead. North Shields, formed in 1896, went into administration after failing to repay creditors £98,000, and their famous home at Appleby Park was sold off. They were also relegated way down the leagues.
That was in 1992 and the club were only saved by a bunch of hardy supporters with the likes of Lindisfarne’s legendary Alan Hull and drummer Ray Laidlaw joining the board. But the club would rise again. In 2015, North Shields repeated their Wembley success of 1969, lifting the FA Vase by beating Glossop North End.
Today the Robins play their games at Daren Persson Stadium at Ralph Gardner Park, and compete in Northern League Division One.
■These were the four football grounds in Newcastle’s East End where the forerunners of Newcastle United played, before the club famously set up home across the city at St James’ Park in 1892.
We see Dalton Street; The Vicarage, Bothal Street; Heaton Junction and Stanley Street.
The sites in Byker and Heaton were discovered by football writer, author and Newcastle fan, Paul Brown, while he was writing his book All With Smiling Faces.
Newcastle United was founded in 1881 as Stanley FC, being named after Stanley Street in South Byker.
Stanley Street no longer exists, but it was part of what is now Walker Road, at the bottom of Raby Street. The team played on open ground near where St Peter’s Social Club now stands. As the club grew, it changed its name to East End, and moved to a new ground behind St Michael’s Vicarage, near Bothal Street, inside what is now the Byker Wall estate.
Within a couple of years the club had moved again, to a pitch next to the railway line at Dalton Street.
But things really began to take off after East End moved to Heaton in 1886. The new ground was at Heaton Junction, just off Chillingham Road, near to Hartford Street.
Heaton Junction was regarded as one of the best grounds in the country, with a good pitch, a large wooden pavilion, and one of football’s first press boxes.
East End played many big matches at Heaton Junction, including derbies against Sunderland and cross-town rivals West End, and attracted crowds of up to 5,000.
Paul Brown’s books All With Smiling Faces and Savage Enthusiasm are available on Amazon and from good bookshops
Paul White photographed the “lost” grounds of Newcastle East End.