Lost Grounds: Bradford Park Avenue – the forgotten venue of the English international matches

Once an integral a part of their home towns, dozens of Football League grounds have disappeared over the past 30 years, taking with them memories lost for generations of fans.

But what happened next? To discover, the creator traveled everywhere in the country and visited quite a few housing projects, shopping centers and even the odd hospital.

Kicking off our four-part series, which runs every Tuesday in August, is maybe probably the most poignant of all: Bradford Park Avenue. Home to a league club for 62 years and residential to county cricket for greater than a century, Park Avenue lies forgotten and abandoned. One of its few visitors within the last decade has been an archaeological dig site…

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Looking up at a series of turnstiles that after led to a football pitch where England played a global match, it’s as if time has stood still.

High up on the wall is an indication reading “5/-“, indicating an entrance fee of 5 shillings in old money. Around the corner are a pair more bricked up entrances and an enormous rusty iron gate with spikes to discourage anyone attempting to get in free of charge.

A men's toilet block can also be clearly visible behind a bench where fans last was once over 50 years ago. Walking inside, you’ll be able to see two massively overgrown rows of seats and a crumbling boundary wall overlooking the rough stays of a pitch that after saw the likes of Stanley Matthews and Len Shackleton play.

Also buried amongst the overgrown shrubbery are two floodlight pylon bases and a mountain of sporting memorabilia. Welcome to Park Avenue in Bradford, the forgotten home of the previous Football League club of the identical name, now a ghostly preserve of Mother Nature.

At a time when demolition crews seem to reach practically in the meanwhile the doors of great sporting cathedrals equivalent to Highbury, Roker Park and White Hart Lane close for the last time, this former sporting mecca is really a step backwards.

Not only is the cricket ground that Yorkshire played on for over a century until 1996 still there, albeit in a semi-derelict state, but enough stays on the adjoining football side – the 2 sports shared a important stand designed by leading architect Archibald Leitch – to bring tears to the eyes of supporters of a certain vintage.

Park Avenue was at all times considered higher locally than Valley Parade, the house of Bradford City – once Premier League and now League Two. For a start, it had 14,000 seats and a capability of 37,000. The train station and tram stop, situated where the ornate Great Mosque now stands, just across Horton Park Avenue, meant that 1000’s of fans may very well be transported to and from the stadium very quickly.

Then there was the corner pavilion, nicknamed the 'doll's house' by visitors. This charming two-storey constructing served the same purpose to Fulham's Craven Cottage, housing the football club's changing rooms and boardroom, with an upstairs balcony allowing officials to look at matches.

However, this was no salvation for Bradford, as with the transition from the Swinging Sixties into the subsequent decade, his success deteriorated noticeably.

In 1970 the club was voted out of the league and found for 4 more years within the Northern Premier League before being wound up with debts of £57,652 ($73,580 today). By this time the football stadium had already been sold to a property developer and Avenue played its last season across town, at Valley Parade.

Due to a use restriction that required the positioning for use solely for sports and recreational purposes, the football field was ultimately left to decay, even after the municipality purchased the positioning and made grand plans to construct a sports complex.

By 1980, Leitch's ornate important stand had change into so unsafe that it needed to be demolished. The news sparked a wave of nostalgia across town, with tons of of fans flocking to the old stadium for one last look.

One pensioner was even helped to the weed-covered end of Canterbury Avenue and left the road where, leaning precariously on a rusty guardrail, he stared silently at what should have appeared to him like an unkempt grave.

Tim Clapham, a fan since 1963 and now club historian, was amongst those that made one final pilgrimage before the wrecking ball destroyed not only the 4,000-seat Main Stand and its distinctive three gables, but in addition the Dolls' House and the roof of Horton Park End.

“Only the half-time scoreboard was left standing and even the old club had been sold to a local pig farmer,” says Clapham. “Such a sad time. So many came hoping to take home a souvenir, something to remind them of the stadium.”

“Some wanted the letters 'BFC' engraved on the central gable of the stand, while others preferred the two crests at the ends. But when they were taken down, these things were much bigger than they looked. It would have taken a truck to remove them!”

While Bradford mourned for the second time the lack of an arena that not only hosted a global match between England and Ireland in 1909, but in addition saw the fastest goal within the Football League so far (4 seconds, Jim Fryatt against Tranmere Rovers in 1964), cricket had no less than survived.

This was the case until 1996, when Yorkshire County Cricket Club decided to pay attention mainly on Headingley as their home ground, with just a few games also played at Scarborough each season. Others to lose their away ground status were Middlesbrough, Harrogate and Hull, where a part of the MKM Stadium now stands on the old Circle Cricket Ground and serves as a dual home to Hull City and rugby league club Hull FC.

Park Avenue was a shadow of its former self long before its last County Championship game against Leicestershire in 1996.

What anyone who can remember Park Avenue's glory days would consider the old ground in 2024 is pure speculation. The cricket ground has been restored to first-class standards lately, allowing Yorkshire's second team to return and play the odd match.

But the encompassing area is in a tragic state. Where the magnificent pavilion stood until the late Nineteen Eighties, there’s now nothing but wasteland, and where Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth and others plotted the downfall of the visiting batsmen, there are actually three-metre-high bushes. When sports arenas are left to decay, time is a formidable enemy.

Directly in front of it are just a few rows of dilapidated seats, a lot of them vandalised, all battling the weeds slowly creeping up the concrete steps. Elsewhere, it's the same story: fenced-off sections of crumbling terraces, interspersed with banks of vegetation.

The only vivid spot is a mural depicting English spin bowler – and native hero – Adil Rashid, painted to mark the beginning of the Hundred competition in 2021. But even that is fading, reinforcing the dilapidated impression of a ground that was once considered a jewel in Yorkshire's cricket crown.

What stays of the old football pitch isn’t any less depressing, even considering that its abandoned state enabled an archaeological dig in 2015 that uncovered all types of fascinating artifacts.

The loot, captured for posterity as a part of the Breaking Ground art project, included studs, coins, marbles, goal hooks and even a diaper pin. The latter, it turned out, was related to the elastic on goalie Chick Farr's pants breaking during a game, requiring the coach to make an emergency repair. Farr never got over the incident and was commonly showered with pins when he stood between the posts.

Hopes that Bradford might ever return to its spiritual home led to 1988 when a cricket school (now a gymnasium) was built on half of the old football ground. In the identical yr a brand new Park Avenue club was formed, whose home for nearly three many years has been Horsfall Stadium, an athletics facility situated just a few miles from that old ground.

In cricket, nevertheless, major plans were unveiled just just a few years ago to revive Yorkshire to its former stomping ground through an ambitious £5.5 million redevelopment.

The first phase saw the opening of a state-of-the-art dressing room, outdoor nets and a scoreboard booth in 2017. England and Yorkshire team-mates Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and Rashid were amongst those cutting the ribbon. The nets, which were erected between the halfway line and roughly the penalty area of ​​the old Avenue pitch, were converted into an indoor facility last yr.

The remainder of the unique plan – a communal pavilion with changing rooms to be built to the side of the unique pavilion, a restaurant for 250 guests, 1,000 spectator seats and security fencing – never got here to fruition. As a result, the planned return of county cricket to Bradford never got here to fruition. Instead, York joined Leeds and Scarborough on the list of Yorkshire's home grounds.

This may very well be the ultimate nail within the coffin of any hopes of bringing skilled sport back to this corner of Bradford. Now all that is still is the ghostly presence of the past, in addition to the abandoned turnstiles and stands which have been home to nothing but worms and weeds for the past five many years.