Stirring tale of Bolton’s home by the tracks
ASTEAM engine puffs past, high above an open terrace where those not sheltering under umbrellas are getting wet as the action takes place down the other end. Burnden Park, home of Bolton Wanderers, 1952.
It is an image that might seem surreal to modern eyes. But it was most definitely real: here is professional football in a northern town amid the last smokey toot-toots of the Industrial Revolution.
Burnden Park by then was essential to Bolton. The ground was created as a home for Bolton Wanderers in 1895 and became part of the town’s geography and history, tragically so in 1946. Burnden Park was central to Bolton literally and figuratively.
If it looks here like something from an LS Lowry sketchbook, that is not far-fetched. When Lowry painted his famous football picture
Going to the Match, it was based on Burnden. It was not a depiction of a particular day or game, he said, more a composite of memories of visits to grounds such as Burnden or Turf Moor or Maine Road. It was a painting of an atmosphere.
The days of steam were coming to an end. By 1997, when the last whistle was blown at Burnden, half of what became known, funnily enough, as the Railway End had been turned into a supermarket. The Wanderers moved out of town, to Horwich, where they remain.
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was not new to the club — the name Wanderers stems from early nomadic days in the 1870s and 80s, when the young club was searching for a permanent home. It was found by the railway line, a vast expanse of land described as derelict and boggy, but which Bolton turned into a home that spread down to Manchester Road.
on its day Burnden Park was capable of holding 70,000, which it for the visit of Manchester City in 1933. It was a stadium of some prestige and home to a team that won three FA Cups in the 1920s.
Before then, arguably Burnden’s biggest occasion was the hosting of the 1901 FA Cup final replay. Just six years after construction, this was recognition of the scale and modernity of the ground. The afternoon was not to go well, however, and Bolton were not awarded the honour again. It became known as ‘Pie Saturday’, named for the amount of food that had to be given away due to the smaller than anticipated attendance.
Tottenham and Sheffield United had drawn 2-2 in the final held at Crystal Palace, in front of 110,000. For the replay at Burnden there was a quarter of that number, a disappointing crowd caused by a problem that current supporters will recognise — the rail network.
Tottenham won 3-1 and, being in the Southern League not the Football League, were the first and last ‘non-League’ FA Cup winners.
‘Pie Saturday’ was not the last time a pie — or a train — would be linked to Burnden Park. Sadly, though, Burnden Park would be the scene of tragedy before that would happen. on March 9, 1946, at the Railway End of the ground, 33 supporters watching Bolton versus Stoke City in the sixth round of the FA Cup were crushed to death by a surging crowd estimated at 85,000. There were 500 people injured.
AT the time it was the worst sporting disaster in Britain and prompted an inquiry whose findings seem depressingly familiar: poor facilities, overwhelmed staff, a lack of communication, insufficient regard for crowd safety.
Burnden Park had its unwanted history. The game moved on, as it does. not long after that actordid comedian Arthur Askey turned up on a locomotive.
In 1955 film The Love Match, Askey played the role of a footballmad train driver with Burnden Park as the backdrop. The film begins with Askey hurtling back to the fictional depot to deposit his engine so he can get to the ‘City-United’ match.
once he accomplishes this, Askey finds the ground full, climbs over a wall and then inadvertently throws a pie from the terraces. It hits the referee in the face.
The last whistle heard at Burnden Park was in April 1997. Bolton defeated Charlton 4-1, John Mcginlay scoring the last ever goal at a famous, storied, now lost, English stadium.