St Andrew's (stadium)

Small Heath Alliance – the original name of Birmingham City Football Club – played their first home games on waste ground off Arthur Street, in the Bordesley Green district of Birmingham, very near the site where St Andrew's would be built.[lower-alpha 2] In 1876, they made a temporary move to a fenced-off field in Ladypool Road, Sparkbrook, with an estimated capacity of 3,000 spectators; because the field was enclosed, admission could be charged. Interest in the team grew, and a year later they moved again, this time to a rented field in Small Heath, situated on the eastern edge of Birmingham's built-up area, just north of the main road to Coventry.[11][lower-alpha 2] This ground, which became known as Muntz Street, had four sides of open terracing, a small covered wooden stand, and a changing-room for the players. When first opened it could hold approximately 10,000 spectators.[11][12] Over the years the height of the terracing was raised, which increased the capacity to around 30,000, but this became insufficient to cope with the demand. The attendance at a match in 1905 against local rivals Aston Villa was officially recorded as 28,000 spectators,[13] but several thousand more climbed walls or forced turnstiles to gain entry.[12][14] The landlords refused to sell the freehold of the ground, nor would they permit major extensions to be made. As the board of directors estimated that staying at Muntz Street was costing the club £2,000 a year (£228,000 at today's prices),[15] they began the search for an alternative site.[11][14]

1890 map shows wet, sloping industrial site chosen for new ground.

Director Harry Morris identified a site for a new ground in Bordesley, some three-quarters of a mile (1 km) from Muntz Street towards the city centre. Covering an area of 7.5 acres (3 ha), bounded by Cattell Road, Coventry Road, Tilton Road, Garrison Lane and the railway, and near St Andrew's church, the site was where a brickworks had once operated. Though Morris described the land itself as "a wilderness of stagnant water and muddy slopes",[12] the Sporting Mail considered it "very favourably situated for obtaining easy communication with the city and many of the suburbs, and will be served by an excellent service of electric cars [trams], while the provision of a railway station close at hand is also considered as within the bounds of possibility."[16]

The club took the land on a 21-year lease, and entrusted the role of surveyor and engineer to a local carpenter, Harry Pumfrey, who despite a lack of qualifications produced plans "which would have done credit to the most expensive professional architect".[14] Club director Thomas Turley, a builder, acted as clerk of works, and it is estimated the club saved more than £2,000 in professional fees by keeping the work in-house.[14] Tradition has it that gypsies, evicted from the site before work could begin, laid a 100-year curse on the club;[17] although gypsies are known to have camped nearby, there is no contemporary evidence for their eviction by the club, and construction began in February 1906.[18][19]

1913 map shows layout of completed St Andrew's Ground.

Artesian springs, which kept the land flooded, had to be drained and blocked off with tons of rubble before soil could be laid on top.[12] To create height for the terracing on the Coventry Road side of the ground, the club offered the site as a tip: local people paid a total of £800 (£91,500 today)[15]for dumping an estimated 100,000 loads of rubbish.[20] This embankment was known from the beginning as the Spion Kop, stood 110 terraces high at its highest point, and had a reported capacity of 48,000 spectators, each paying 6d (£2.86 today).[15] The Grandstand, on the Garrison Lane side of the ground, was 123 yards (112 m) in length. It held 6,000 seats divided among six sections, priced from 1s to 2s (£5.70 to £11.40 today),[15] and all accesses were lit by electricity. In front of the stand was space for 5,000 to stand under cover.[12][19] Beneath the stand were refreshment rooms, changing rooms, a training area with plunge bath, a billiard room donated by brewery magnate Sir John Holder, and the club's boardroom and offices, which hitherto had been maintained in premises in Birmingham city centre.[11][12] Behind the goal at the railway end of the ground was space for a further 4,000 standing spectators, and access to the ground was gained via turnstiles on three sides of the ground.[21] Total capacity was estimated at 75,000, and construction cost at £10,000 (£1,140,000 today).[15][19] The playing surface, at 115 by 75 yards (105 m × 69 m), was one of the largest in the country, had a four-yard (3.7 m) grassed border, and was surrounded by a cinder running track.[12]

St Andrew's was officially opened by Sir John Holder on 26 December 1906, when Birmingham played Middlesbrough in a First Division fixture. There had been heavy snowfall overnight, and dozens of volunteers, including members of the club's board, worked all morning to clear the pitch. The game finally kicked off an hour late, finishing goalless in front of 32,000 spectators.[7][22] The Birmingham Daily Post editorial next day suggested that "the fact that so many spectators attended under such adverse conditions augurs well for the step that the directors have taken", and that the directors were "to be congratulated in having provided their supporters with a ground second to none in the country".[22]

The Football Association chose St Andrew's to host the 1907 FA Cup semifinal between The Wednesday and Woolwich Arsenal; Wednesday won 3–1, and went on to win the tournament. This was the first FA Cup tie to be played at the ground, as Birmingham had lost their opening match away from home. Three more semifinals took place at St Andrew's before the Second World War, in 1911, 1924 and 1934.[23] The club bought the freehold of the ground in 1921 for a price believed to be less than £7,000 (£801,000 today).[15][24] In the 1930s, roofs were erected over the Kop and Railway End terraces,[7] and in February 1939, the ground attendance record of 66,844 or 67,341, was set at the fifth-round FA Cup tie against Everton.[lower-alpha 1]

During the First World War, the club supported the war effort by allowing the ground to be used as a rifle range for military training.[25] On the outbreak of the Second World War, all outdoor sport was banned by the Government until safety implications could be assessed. When football resumed a few weeks later, Birmingham's Chief Constable ordered the ground's closure because of its proximity to air-raid targets such as the BSA munitions factories.[26][27] The matter was first raised in Parliament in November 1939, but the Home Secretary felt unable to intervene.[28] By March 1940, when St Andrew's had for some time been the only football ground in England still closed, the Chief Constable bowed to public pressure, and a crowd of 13,241 witnessed Birmingham's first home game in more than six months.[26][27][29]

In 1941, St Andrew's suffered 20 direct hits from Luftwaffe bombing, which destroyed the roof of the Kop, badly damaged the Railway End, and forced the team to play elsewhere.[26] It was therefore a surprising choice of venue for a wartime international match between England and Wales; on safety grounds, spectators were required to purchase tickets in advance, and numbers were limited to 25,000.[30][31] Three months later, the Main Stand, which was being used as a temporary National Fire Service station, burned down, destroying the club's records and equipment – "not so much as a lead pencil was saved from the wreckage"[32] – when a fireman mistook a bucket of petrol for water when intending to damp down a brazier.[7][21] The team returned to the ground in 1943.[21]

The replacement Main Stand, built in the early 1950s, used a propped cantilever roof design, which meant fewer pillars to block spectators' view of the pitch. Floodlights were installed, and officially switched on for a friendly match against Borussia Dortmund in October 1956.[23] By the early 1960s, a stand had been built at the Railway End to the same design as the Main Stand, a new roof erected over the Kop, and the Tilton Road end covered for the first time.[23] A scoreboard and clock were installed at the City end of the ground in memory of Birmingham and England player Jeff Hall, who died of polio during the 1958–59 season.[33] In the 1970s, the Asda chain proposed to share the cost of a new stand as part of a supermarket development on land behind the Kop made vacant by slum clearance; in the face of opposition from commercial rivals, the proposal fell through.[23]

The last home game of the 1984–85 promotion season, against Leeds United, was marred by rioting, culminating in the death of a boy when a wall collapsed on him; this was on the same day as the Bradford City stadium fire, and the events at St Andrew's were included in the remit of the Popplewell inquiry into safety at sports grounds.[8] In response to this and the later Taylor Report, the capacity of St Andrew's was cut to 26,000, but it was accepted that the stadium had to be brought up to modern standards.[34] Club chairman David Gold recalled his first visit in March 1993:

It was a shock. I had a picture in my mind of what I was expecting, but it was in such a state of disrepair that it was hard to comprehend ... Only two-thirds of the bulbs on the floodlights were working and the Football League had threatened action if we didn't do something to improve the lights. It was raining. It was a dour game. It was dark. It was dull. There were people standing in the rain looking extremely uncomfortable and unhappy. This First Division club was penniless and near to extinction. There were corrugated-iron fences round the ground and it looked as though it hadn't seen a lick of paint since Birmingham reached the FA Cup Final in 1956.[35]

The Railway Stand and Main Stand (right) in May 1994, viewed across the site of the demolished Kop.

Though relegation to the Third Division meant the club was no longer bound by the Taylor Report's 1994 deadline for conversion to all-seater,[36] new owner David Sullivan continued the £4.5 million development as planned.[23] After the last home game of the 1993–94 season, the Kop and Tilton Road terraces were demolished, helped by fans who took home a significant proportion as souvenirs,[34] the land was cleared – the rubbish tip beneath the Kop which had earned the club £800 in 1906 (£43,300 at 1994 prices)[15] cost £250,000 to decontaminate[37] – and by the start of the new season, 7,000 seats in the Tilton Road Stand were ready for use.[23] On completion of the Kop Stand, the stadium was formally re-opened in November 1994 by Baroness Trumpington, representing the Department of National Heritage, who unveiled a commemorative plaque and presented a cheque for £2.5 million on behalf of the Football Trust; the ceremony was followed by a friendly match against Aston Villa, attended by a crowd of 20,000.[23] Planning permission for an all-seater Railway Stand was granted in March 1995,[38] but work was delayed by a dispute over land owned by Railtrack and the stand opened only in 1999.[39]

In 2004 a proposal was put forward to build a "sports village" comprising a new 55,000 stadium for the club, to be known as the City of Birmingham Stadium, other sports and leisure facilities, and a super casino. The project would be jointly financed by Birmingham City Council, Birmingham City F.C. (via the proceeds of the sale of St Andrew's) and the casino group Las Vegas Sands. The feasibility of the plan depended on the government issuing a licence for a super casino as permitted under the Gambling Act 2005, and Birmingham being chosen as the venue,[40] but this did not happen. The club have planning permission to redevelop the Main Stand,[41] and a derelict building behind the stand has been demolished,[42] but club and council continued for a time to seek alternative sources of funding for the City of Birmingham Stadium project.[43]

In 2013, the Birmingham City Supporters' Trust's application for listing St Andrew's as an Asset of Community Value (ACV) under the Localism Act 2011 was approved by Birmingham City Council.[44] The legislation defines an ACV as a building or other land whose main use "furthers the social wellbeing or social interests of the local community" and where it is realistic to believe it could do so in the future.[45] It requires any proposed sale to be notified to the council, and provides for a six-month moratorium on that sale to allow the Trust and other community groups to submit their own bid.[44]

For sponsorship reasons, the stadium was officially renamed the St. Andrew's Trillion Trophy Stadium in June 2018.[6] During the 2018–19 season, in a further move to reduce the club's losses in light of breaches of the EFL's Profitability and Sustainability Regulations, the stadium was sold for £22.8 million to Birmingham City Stadium Ltd, a new company wholly owned by the football club's parent, Birmingham Sports Holdings, and would be leased back to the club for £1.25 million per year for 25 years.[2]

Having failed to reach an agreement with the club's landlords, Wasps RFC, to continue playing at the Ricoh Arena, Coventry City F.C. played their matches at St Andrew's in 2019–20 and 2020–21.[9]

An annual survey conducted during the 2020–21 season revealed the need for repairs to remedy the effects of water ingress on both Kop and Tilton Road Stands. Although the upper tiers were expected to be usable by the first home match of the 2021–22 season, resulting in a temporary reduction of total capacity to 19,000, the deadline for full completion was not until May 2022.[46] However, the upper Tilton did not reopen until a month into the season, the upper Kop took a further six weeks,[47] and May 2022 ended with the club still awaiting full results of site investigations.[48]