Paul C
2005-04-26 18:20:08 UTC
For those interesting in footballing literature, a new book has been
published about Archibald Leitch - the Glaswegian architect who
designed many of the majestic stands which added so much character to
many of Britain's football grounds (until many were demolished in the
past decade or so to make way for look-alike legoblock stands and
stadiums)
At least some clubs such as Rangers
http://www.glasgowguide.co.uk/ibrox/glasgow-ibrox-rangers1.html
had the good sense to integrate their Leitch grandstand within their
modern stadium - unlike Aston Villa who destroyed their Trinity Road
Stand in 2001
http://www.apwj49.dsl.pipex.com/lost/trinity.htm
Engineering Archie (English Heritage, £14.99).
Review from The Times
Man who built his place in history
By Richard Whitehead
The story of Archibald Leitch, stadium designer
FOOTBALL AND ARCHITECTURE they go together like. Well, like what
exactly? Cornflakes and engine oil? Croquet and heavy metal? Kieron
Dyer and Lee Bowyer? A visit to a typical modern English ground can be
a depressing experience for anyone seeking an aesthetic as well as a
sporting experience. While there is no doubt that the new homes
inhabited by the likes of Middlesbrough, Leicester City and
Southampton are, overall, an improvement on their cramped, antiquated
former grounds, there is a grey uniformity to many of them.
It was not always this way. Once football grounds were as deeply
idiosyncratic and individual as, well, as our own homes, really.
Remember The Dells chocolate boxes, the old cinema balcony at
Wrexhams Racecourse Ground, the gigantic throstle on top of the
half-time scoreboard at The Hawthorns, Upton Parks truncated
goalposts?
And those majestic stands. The imperious Trinity Road at Villa Park
the St Pancras of football, as a Sunday Times reporter called it in
1960 the gargantuan triple-decker Main Stand at Goodison Park, the
saw-tooth roof of Wolverhampton Wanderers Molineux Road Stand. These
three structures and many others were the work of one man:
Archibald Leitch, a Glasgow-born engineer and factory architect.
Leitch, his life, his work and his legacy, is the subject of a
wonderful new book, Engineering Archie (English Heritage, £14.99).
The author is Simon Inglis, who might be said to have first discovered
Leitch for the benefit of the nation when he wrote his seminal
Football Grounds of England and Wales in 1983. That work, memorably
described as the sports book of the century by Frank Keating,
established Inglis as one of footballs leading writers and
historians. What Nick Hornby did for fan angst, Inglis did for all
those who had ever risked a road accident while craning their neck to
get a brief glimpse of a distant floodlight pylon.
Inglis cheerfully admits to knowing little about Leitch until he
completed his epic survey of the 92 League grounds, but for 20 years
he has been accumulating more and more information about the man in an
extended preparation for this biography.
So who was the man Inglis describes as footballs designer in chief?
Like so many of the people who shaped Victorian and Edwardian Britain,
he was a Scot who was fortunate enough to embark on his career at a
time of phenomenal technological innovation and growth. To be an
engineer then would have been like being a rock star today, Inglis
said.
He was a factory architect and football does not seem to have formed
part of his career-plan until he was asked to design a new ground at
Ibrox for Rangers, the club Leitch supported. It is at this point that
the story takes a remarkable turn and one that should have meant that
his reputation was ruined before it had begun to get off the ground.
The first big match staged at Leitchs Ibrox was the Scotland-England
international on April 5 1902, a day that British football saw its
first significant disaster when 25 people died after a section of
wooden terracing collapsed. It should have ruined Leitch, but
remarkably, his business survived and he found no shortage of clubs
willing to engage his services.
He was, for instance, in at the beginning of Old Trafford, when
Manchester United moved to their new headquarters from their smoky,
polluted former home at Clayton. He built the main stand at Anfield as
well as across Stanley Park at Goodison, he designed the West Stand at
White Hart Lane, the Main Stand at the newly opened Stamford Bridge
and helped Arsenal with the move to Highbury (although the listed Art
Deco East and West Stands are not his work).
His real masterpieces, though, were for Fulham, Aston Villa and
Rangers. In West London, he designed the famous cottage in the corner
of the ground and the impressive brick-fronted Stevenage Road Stand.
Both, happily, now enjoy listed status and are protected from the sort
of treatment meted out to Aston Villas Trinity Road Stand.
With its stained glass windows, Italian mosaics and sweeping
staircase, the Villa structure was a bold statement (even if the
architectural style was decidedly retro in the mid-1920s), but that
did not stop the club demolishing it in 2000 to make way for a
replacement that might best be described as cheap and cheerless.
Inglis, a Villa supporter, has two words for the men who oversaw the
destruction. One is best not repeated in a family newspaper, the other
is philistines.
There was a happier ending for his equally magnificent South Stand at
Ibrox, opened in 1928. Demolition was also a possibility here, but
Rangers instead embarked upon a costly and sophisticated redevelopment
that preserved its stunning frontage.
Inglis is keen to point out, though (and here is the paradox that
undermines the lazy, sepia-tinted assumption that older means better)
that Leitch generally produced uniform designs that, first and
foremost, met the stringent budgets of the clubs. He was not so very
different, then, from the men building todays new grounds.
Well written, forensically researched, elegantly designed and
sumptuously illustrated, Engineering Archie is a book that must
command a place on the shelf of every discerning fan.
published about Archibald Leitch - the Glaswegian architect who
designed many of the majestic stands which added so much character to
many of Britain's football grounds (until many were demolished in the
past decade or so to make way for look-alike legoblock stands and
stadiums)
At least some clubs such as Rangers
http://www.glasgowguide.co.uk/ibrox/glasgow-ibrox-rangers1.html
had the good sense to integrate their Leitch grandstand within their
modern stadium - unlike Aston Villa who destroyed their Trinity Road
Stand in 2001
http://www.apwj49.dsl.pipex.com/lost/trinity.htm
Engineering Archie (English Heritage, £14.99).
Review from The Times
Man who built his place in history
By Richard Whitehead
The story of Archibald Leitch, stadium designer
FOOTBALL AND ARCHITECTURE they go together like. Well, like what
exactly? Cornflakes and engine oil? Croquet and heavy metal? Kieron
Dyer and Lee Bowyer? A visit to a typical modern English ground can be
a depressing experience for anyone seeking an aesthetic as well as a
sporting experience. While there is no doubt that the new homes
inhabited by the likes of Middlesbrough, Leicester City and
Southampton are, overall, an improvement on their cramped, antiquated
former grounds, there is a grey uniformity to many of them.
It was not always this way. Once football grounds were as deeply
idiosyncratic and individual as, well, as our own homes, really.
Remember The Dells chocolate boxes, the old cinema balcony at
Wrexhams Racecourse Ground, the gigantic throstle on top of the
half-time scoreboard at The Hawthorns, Upton Parks truncated
goalposts?
And those majestic stands. The imperious Trinity Road at Villa Park
the St Pancras of football, as a Sunday Times reporter called it in
1960 the gargantuan triple-decker Main Stand at Goodison Park, the
saw-tooth roof of Wolverhampton Wanderers Molineux Road Stand. These
three structures and many others were the work of one man:
Archibald Leitch, a Glasgow-born engineer and factory architect.
Leitch, his life, his work and his legacy, is the subject of a
wonderful new book, Engineering Archie (English Heritage, £14.99).
The author is Simon Inglis, who might be said to have first discovered
Leitch for the benefit of the nation when he wrote his seminal
Football Grounds of England and Wales in 1983. That work, memorably
described as the sports book of the century by Frank Keating,
established Inglis as one of footballs leading writers and
historians. What Nick Hornby did for fan angst, Inglis did for all
those who had ever risked a road accident while craning their neck to
get a brief glimpse of a distant floodlight pylon.
Inglis cheerfully admits to knowing little about Leitch until he
completed his epic survey of the 92 League grounds, but for 20 years
he has been accumulating more and more information about the man in an
extended preparation for this biography.
So who was the man Inglis describes as footballs designer in chief?
Like so many of the people who shaped Victorian and Edwardian Britain,
he was a Scot who was fortunate enough to embark on his career at a
time of phenomenal technological innovation and growth. To be an
engineer then would have been like being a rock star today, Inglis
said.
He was a factory architect and football does not seem to have formed
part of his career-plan until he was asked to design a new ground at
Ibrox for Rangers, the club Leitch supported. It is at this point that
the story takes a remarkable turn and one that should have meant that
his reputation was ruined before it had begun to get off the ground.
The first big match staged at Leitchs Ibrox was the Scotland-England
international on April 5 1902, a day that British football saw its
first significant disaster when 25 people died after a section of
wooden terracing collapsed. It should have ruined Leitch, but
remarkably, his business survived and he found no shortage of clubs
willing to engage his services.
He was, for instance, in at the beginning of Old Trafford, when
Manchester United moved to their new headquarters from their smoky,
polluted former home at Clayton. He built the main stand at Anfield as
well as across Stanley Park at Goodison, he designed the West Stand at
White Hart Lane, the Main Stand at the newly opened Stamford Bridge
and helped Arsenal with the move to Highbury (although the listed Art
Deco East and West Stands are not his work).
His real masterpieces, though, were for Fulham, Aston Villa and
Rangers. In West London, he designed the famous cottage in the corner
of the ground and the impressive brick-fronted Stevenage Road Stand.
Both, happily, now enjoy listed status and are protected from the sort
of treatment meted out to Aston Villas Trinity Road Stand.
With its stained glass windows, Italian mosaics and sweeping
staircase, the Villa structure was a bold statement (even if the
architectural style was decidedly retro in the mid-1920s), but that
did not stop the club demolishing it in 2000 to make way for a
replacement that might best be described as cheap and cheerless.
Inglis, a Villa supporter, has two words for the men who oversaw the
destruction. One is best not repeated in a family newspaper, the other
is philistines.
There was a happier ending for his equally magnificent South Stand at
Ibrox, opened in 1928. Demolition was also a possibility here, but
Rangers instead embarked upon a costly and sophisticated redevelopment
that preserved its stunning frontage.
Inglis is keen to point out, though (and here is the paradox that
undermines the lazy, sepia-tinted assumption that older means better)
that Leitch generally produced uniform designs that, first and
foremost, met the stringent budgets of the clubs. He was not so very
different, then, from the men building todays new grounds.
Well written, forensically researched, elegantly designed and
sumptuously illustrated, Engineering Archie is a book that must
command a place on the shelf of every discerning fan.
--
Paul
Paul