GROUND ZERO
POPULAR on the non-league circuit for being a traditional ground with old-fashioned charm, Twerton Park is one of the more unlikely places to stage Second Division football.
It was never intended for that purpose. When Bristol Rovers had to leave Eastville, their historic home, in 1986, they moved in with their neighbours, Bath City. They became tenants – and stayed 10 years.
For three of them, from 1990, they were in the second flight, bringing Newcastle, West Ham, Sheffield Wednesday and Kenny Dalglish’s Blackburn to Bath. For a ground with a current capacity of just 8,840 and average attendances of around 1,000 in recent years, they were very different days.
Not that all of the memories are happy. A group of Bristol City fans set fire to the Main Stand in 1990. Seven were convicted of arson and it cost £800,000 to restore the stand. Opposite the rebuilt Main Stand is one of Twerton Park’s more distinctive features, a covered terrace. Views from the ground include Beckford’s Tower, a landmark on the Bath skyline, and a gasometer – a suitable home for Rovers, nicknamed the Gasheads.
But Bath City were there long before Rovers. They arranged a lease in 1909 from the Bath Horse Show Committee. They had to fit fixtures in around the horse shows, but as there was a big hole in the pitch for a water jump, it was hardly an ideal arrangement.
Bath bought Twerton Park outright in 1931, and tried to level out a huge slope. The ground, in Bath’s suburbs, was built into a hillside. It TWERTON PARK is the subject in our series on grounds which have disappeared suffered bomb damage in the Second World War, and the banks where fans had stood were commandeered for allotments until the conflict ended.
Terracing replaced the banks long before it became a Football League ground. Rovers’ decade-long stay ended in 1996 when they moved back to Bristol and the Memorial Stadium.
But Bath City’s time as landlords had not ended. Team Bath shared the ground before they were dissolved in 2009. Now, once again, City are alone in playing there.