Aston Villa

Grounds

Villa Park, Birmingham 1914–40

n Fred Rinder, Aston Villa’s all- Stand at Ibrox Park, completed cycle and athletics track. Rinder I powerful chairman, Archibald in 1929. Until the redevelopment later claimed to have laid down Leitch would meet the best- of Highbury in the 1930s the every ‘level and line’ of the ground informed client he was ever likely stand would also be the finest before construction began. to find in the football world. in England. But then, it was the A range of other buildings that Rinder had no great personal costliest, as shall become all too had formed part of the amusement wealth. But in his role as a painfully clear later. park (see opposite) were, meanwhile, senior surveyor for Birmingham Yet how could it have been turned into Aston Villa’s palatial Corporation, with responsibility otherwise? Villa Park’s setting new headquarters. for pubs, billiard halls and music cried out for a grandiose The location and its new tenants halls, he knew a great deal both architectural statement. were well suited. Football was about how to manage a club and Overlooking the ground, from the latest craze. Villa were the how to read a set of plans. He had the heights of Aston Park, stood team of the day; five times League also, following the introduction a handsome Jacobean mansion, champions and twice winners of of the 1910 Cinematograph Act, Aston Hall. Close by was the the FA Cup during the 1890s alone. become something of an expert on 15th century church of St Peter Even so, no football club ever had the new film industry. and St Paul, some 17th century offices or grounds like these. Villa But in his heart, Fred Rinder almshouses, and, immediately soon took on an aura of solid, was a stadium builder. next to the ground, a superb late institutional respectability. Aston Villa featured this graphic For Leitch, working with such a Victorian pub, the Holte Hotel, Within a few years, however, delight on its programme cover client might well have turned into with 10 bedrooms, its own 400 Villa realised they needed more for most of the 1950s and early a nightmare, as with Henry Norris capacity music hall, billiard rooms seats and terracing, and so after ’60s, amending it faithfully each at Highbury in 1913. Instead, the and two bowling greens. the club raised the £11,250 needed time the ground changed – such relationship bore exceptional fruit. The site of the ground itself to buy the freehold, in 1911, Rinder as when the 1897 Witton Lane For the Trinity Road Stand the had, until the 1880s, formed part started planning afresh. Stand’s original barrel roof (left) two men planned together in of an extensive amusement park, Three years later he was ready. was replaced in 1963 – thereby 1914 – though the war delayed the Aston Lower Grounds (not In June 1914, shareholders at the providing a handy visual guide to its construction until 1922 – was dissimilar to Manchester’s Belle AGM were told ‘that Mr Archibald Villa Park’s development. Both the by far the most accomplished of Vue). But as tastes changed the Leitch, who had considerable Trinity Road Stand (right) and the Leitch’s career up to that point, business collapsed and in 1897 experience in this class of work Before Leitch, Villa Park was The structures Villa chose to finally they were demolished in the far Holte End terrace, were built to and at least the equal of his other Villa’s new home was laid out on was the man to carry out their an oval-shaped ground with a retain were the barrel-roofed late 1970s. The adjacent bowling Leitch’s design. great masterwork, the South the site of the Lower Grounds’ scheme.’ cycle track and a single stand. At Witton Lane Stand, designed by green was lost too, in 1966. one match in 1913 it managed to EB Holmes in 1897, and, on the Note that Leitch’s original design accommodate 59,740. But it had left, the fanciful brick buildings left for Trinity Road did not feature a been an uncomfortable crush. over from the Aston Lower Grounds roof gable or a central stairway, The Leitch perspective above, Company. Designed by Thomas both of which appeared when the presented to shareholders in June Naden in 1878 in a Byzantine, stand was finally built in 1922. 1914, proposed removing the style, before Villa turned them into Of the two end terraces, only the track – a move bitterly opposed by the club offices and a gymnasium Holte End (right) was built, raising the city’s cycle enthusiasts – and they housed an aquarium, Villa Park’s capacity to 76,000. But creating a rectangular ground. menagerie, café and mineral water neither Rinder nor Leitch lived to Many a Victorian ground manufactory. For many years their see it finished. Work did not begin underwent a similar remodelling to faded majesty pervaded Aston until 1939, some 25 years after cater for the football boom. Villa’s culture and identity, until the drawing above first appeared.

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