Lost Grounds: Bradford Park Avenue – the forgotten English international stadium

Once an integral part of the towns and villages they called home, dozens of the country’s Football League grounds have disappeared over the past 30 years, each taking with them a treasure trove of memories for generations of supporters.

But what happened next? The Athletics traveled across the country to find out, visiting numerous residential areas, shopping malls and even the occasional hospital.

Kicking off our four-part series, which runs every Tuesday in August, is perhaps the most poignant of all: Bradford Park Avenue. Home to a League club for 62 years and county cricket for over a century, Park Avenue lies forgotten and abandoned, with one of its few visitors in the past decade being an archaeological dig…

Looking up at the row of turnstiles that once led to a football pitch where England played an international match, it seems as if time has stood still.

High on the wall is a ‘5/-‘, indicating an entrance fee of five shillings in old money. Around the corner are a few more bricked-up entrances, along with a giant rusty iron gate with spikes to discourage anyone who wants to get in for free.

A men’s toilet is also clearly visible at the back of a bench where the supporters stood more than 50 years ago. As you walk inside, you see two huge overgrown terraces and a crumbling outer wall overlooking the bumpy remains of a pitch that once played host to great players such as Stanley Matthews and Len Shackleton.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletics)

Also buried among the undergrowth that has grown wild are two floodlight pylon bases, plus a mountain of sporting memorabilia. Welcome to Park Avenue, Bradford, the forgotten home of the former Football League club of the same name and now a ghostly preserve of Mother Nature.

At a time when demolition crews are almost immediately beginning the final demolition of great sporting cathedrals such as Highbury, Roker Park and White Hart Lane, this former sporting paradise is a true throwback to the past.

Not only does the cricket ground where Yorkshire played for over a century until 1996 still exist, albeit in a semi-derelict state, but there is enough left on the adjacent football side – the two sports shared a main stand designed by the distinguished architect Archibald Leitch – to bring a tear to the eye of supporters of a certain era.

Cricket on Bradford Park Avenue in the summer of 1949 (S&G/Getty Images)

Park Avenue was always seen locally as superior to Valley Parade, home of Bradford City – once of the Premier League and now of League Two. For starters, it had a capacity of 14,000 and a capacity of 37,000. The train station and tram line that served the site of the now ornate Grand Mosque, just across Horton Park Avenue, also ensured that thousands of fans could be ferried to and from the area in no time at all.

Then there was the corner pavilion, nicknamed ‘Dolls’ House’ by visitors. This charming two-storey building served a similar purpose to Fulham’s Craven Cottage, housing the club’s dressing rooms and committee room, with officials able to watch matches from an upstairs balcony.

However, this could not save it, as Bradford’s fortunes took a sharp turn for the worse as the Swinging Sixties entered the next decade.

In 1970 the club were voted out of the League, but hung on in the Northern Premier League for another four years before going bust with debts of £57,652 ($73,580 at today’s exchange rates). By then the ground had been sold to a developer and Avenue played their final season across town at Valley Parade.

Bradford Park Avenue, as seen in 1955 (George W. Hales/Getty Images)

A restrictive treaty stipulated that the land could only be used for sports and recreational purposes. As a result, the football pitch fell into disrepair and died a quiet death. This happened even after the local council had bought the site with grand plans to build a sports complex.

In 1980, Leitch’s ornate main stand had become so unsafe that it had to be demolished. The news sparked a wave of nostalgia in the city, as hundreds of fans flocked to the old stadium for one last look.

One pensioner was even helped onto the weed-overgrown Canterbury Avenue End and left, leaning unsteadily against a rusty guardrail as he looked out in silence over what must have seemed an untended grave.

Tim Clapham, a supporter since 1963 and now the club’s historian, was among those who made a final pilgrimage before the wrecking ball destroyed not only the 4,000-seater Main Stand and its three distinctive gabled buildings, but also the doll’s house and the roof of the Horton Park End.

“Only the half-time scoreboard was left standing, and even the old social club had been sold to a local pig farmer,” says Clapham. “What a sad time. So many people turned up, hoping to take a souvenir, something to remember the ground by.

“Some wanted the ‘BFC’ letters etched onto the centre gable of the stand, while others preferred the two coats of arms at either end. But when they came down, these things were much bigger than they looked. You needed a lorry to take them away!”

As Bradford mourned for the second time the loss of a stadium that had not only hosted an England v Ireland international in 1909, but also the fastest ever goal in the Football League (in four seconds, Jim Fryatt v Tranmere Rovers in 1964), at least cricket survived.

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That was until 1996, when Yorkshire County Cricket Club chose to focus primarily on Headingley as their home ground, with a small number of games each season also being played at Scarborough. Others to lose their out-ground status were Middlesbrough, Harrogate and Hull, where part of the MKM Stadium now stands on the old Circle cricket ground as the dual home of Hull City and rugby league club Hull FC.

Park Avenue had become a shadow of its former self long before the final County Championship match against Leicestershire in 1996.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletics)

What anyone who can remember Park Avenue in its glory days would make of the old venue in 2024 is anyone’s guess. The cricket ground has been brought back to first-class standard in recent years, allowing Yorkshire’s second XI to return and play the occasional game.

But the area is in a sorry state. Where the grand-looking pavilion stood until the late 1980s is now a wasteland, and where Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth and others would plot the downfall of visiting batsmen, there are now 10-foot shrubs. Time is a formidable enemy when sporting arenas are neglected.

Just in front of it are a few dilapidated rows of chairs, quite a few of them smashed and all fighting the weeds that are slowly creeping up the concrete steps. It’s a similar story elsewhere, with fenced-off sections of crumbling terraces interspersed with banks of vegetation.

The one bright spot is a mural of England spin bowler – and local hero – Adil Rashid, painted to mark the launch of the Hundred competition in 2021. But even that is fading, adding to the dilapidated feel of a stadium once regarded as the jewel in Yorkshire’s cricketing crown.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletics)

What remains of the old football field is no less depressing, even when you consider that its abandoned state allowed for archaeological excavations in 2015 that unearthed all sorts of fascinating artefacts.

The haul, captured for posterity by the Breaking Ground art project, included shoe studs, coins, marbles, goal pegs and even a nappy pin. The latter, it turns out, was due to the elastic on goalkeeper Chick Farr’s shorts snapping during a match, forcing the coach to make an emergency repair. Farr never survived the incident and was regularly showered with pins while between the posts.

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Any hope that Bradford would ever return to their spiritual home was dashed when a cricket school (now a gymnasium) was built on half of the old football ground in 1988. A new Park Avenue club was formed that same year and their home ground for almost thirty years has been Horsfall Stadium, an athletics stadium a few miles from this old ground.

(Richard Sutcliffe/The Athletics)

However, on the cricket front, grand plans were unveiled a few years ago to return Yorkshire to its former glory with an ambitious £5.5 million renovation.

The first phase saw the opening of a state-of-the-art changing room, outdoor nets and a scoring hut in 2017, with England and Yorkshire team-mates Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow and Rashid among those cutting the ribbon. The nets, built between what was the halfway line and roughly the penalty area of ​​what was left of Avenue’s old ground, were converted into an indoor facility last year.

The remainder of the original plan – a community pavilion with changing rooms to be placed at the side of the original, a restaurant for 250 guests, 1,000 spectator seats and a safety fence – never materialised. As a result, the intended return of county cricket to the city of Bradford never materialised. Instead, York joined Leeds and Scarborough on the list of Yorkshire’s home grounds.

That could be the final nail in the coffin for hopes of bringing professional sport back to this corner of Bradford. Now all that remains is the ghostly presence of the past, along with the abandoned turnstiles and terraces that have been home only to worms and weeds for the past five decades.

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(Top photo: Richard Sutcliffe, Tim Clapham)