Hotspur Towers - Echoing with Glory

The next part of our celebration of White Hart Lane and the next part of our new stadium being prepared. We discover what the chairman thought about moving from The Lane in the sixties. Along with some great tales and images across the years.

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The series which has run throughout the season was planned last summer, with minor revisions, is then prepared for publication about a month before you see it. This is the first in the series due to appear after the clubs own tribute. Hopefully they haven't used all the same great images and tales, especially as I've saved some of my personal favourites for these last couple.

Left - Arthur Rowe checks that Ron Burgess and Les Medley are happy with the new showers in 1950.

And below right - Arthur again this time in the Board room with the Directors.

When the idea was floated for Spurs and Arsenal to share a stadium in the Lee Valley in the mid sixties, Fred Wale the chairman said ‘we like our ground it was built for football it looks like a football ground it is a place to play and watch football.

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L-R, Arthur Rowe (manager) F.Wale, F.Bearman (chairman), W.Heryet and E.Dewhurst Hornsby.

We have got plans to spend more than a £100,000 on this ground. We are going to add more seats and erect a building in which schoolboys and youngsters can train.  A move from Tottenham would take a lot of thinking about I admit the idea of a twenty first century styled 100,000 seated stadium in the Lea Valley is very attractive.
It may solve some problems but also create many for instance our present stadium is a small island amid a sea of houses we could provide first class parking facilities at this suggested ground and also help ease the housing development problem in north London.

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But what of the fans I don’t know what the reaction would be among the supporters if we decided to move our ground after all they also regard White Hart Lane as their home and a move might make them feel we were deserting them another problem of course is the atmosphere at a huge stadium a crowd of say 35,000 would be lost in the new  stadium but at White Hart Lane especially when  the lights  are on 25,000 can create a similar atmosphere to a 50,000 crowd.

Re-turfing 1952

Nevertheless I certainly think there is a future for this type of amalgamation between two clubs,
I know AC Milan and Inter share the same ground with success A first team game every Saturday would be a grounds mans nightmare the pitch would certainly get chopped up and in addition there would be mid-week games played on it.

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Anyway looking forward a few years this problem may be solved by synthetic pitches. All-weather synthetic grass is already common in the United States.

Willie Hall March 1938

Bill Nicholson and the new plastic sheeting on the pitch 1960

London Daily News, 5th September 1908, assessing the first games of the new season with Spurs now in the Football League, under the heading 'Possibilities at Tottenham.'
“The fact that, excluding Newcastle Tottenham Hotspur have to date collected the largest football crowd of the season reminds me of an old conviction that the Hotspur could command as big a ‘gate’ as Chelsea assuming they were in the first division and had the necessary accommodation at White Hart Lane. Even one of the Tottenham directors has disagreed with me on this point but my assertion is already half proved by Mondays experience, when there were more people to see the game with Wolves than attended Stamford Bridge. North London is an illimitable constituency for the game and if Hotspur fulfill the rosy promise of their first exhibition in the second division they will soon have to start extending the holding capacity of their ground. Their anxieties of the past summer during which they were threatened with banishment's from the first class game thus early been compensated for. They will have no cause to regret their migration from the Southern to the Football League."

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Left - More building work but this is 1934 and the East Stand goes up while Alsford, Greenford and Michelles (?) warm up.

The press in 1899 reporting on the opening of the new ground that the local MP Colonel Bowles was to perform the ceremony of kicking off but at the last moment couldn’t attend. Chairman Charles Roberts stepped in. The crowd paid 115 pounds, eighteen shillings and three pence. Of which fifty eight pounds was paid to the visitors.

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Next stop finds us in the seventies - right Cecil Poyton checks his watch in the ball court, 

Below left - The treatment room at the time.

Right - The home dressing room.

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Concerned about ticket prices? This is about the reserves, in 1909 the club programme revealed ‘if these fixtures continue to receive the support to anything like the extent we shall feel that we have done the right thing in reducing the charge for admission to them from 6d to 4d. We know  that much depends upon the quality of the fare provided, but we think we have got together a set of reserves that can play football worth seeing.  Those who witnessed their displays against West Ham reserves and Hastings are of the same opinion.

There will be no Spurs ‘A’ team this year, but we are allowing the newly formed Tottenham Thursday FC to play their matches on our ground. We hear that the club has had any number of applications from players anxious to join.

Above left - The boys are fighting fit in 1938. While right Bill Brown and Cliff Jones a slightly more relaxed approach during the sixties.

COYS
Keith Harrison.
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The previous featuring White Hart Lane -

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The Hotspurs Ground, Percy Park, Champions Park, That Hallowed Turf, Under Fire, The Shelf, 
The White Harts Ground, Rowels Park, The High Street Ground,  Gilpin Park,  The Ring,
The Edmonton End,  The Marsh Lane End,  The East Side,  Hotspur Towers 58,  33,  16 and 5.
Hotspur Towers 50 - The Cockerel,   Hotspur 46 - Ground Sharing, The German Game,
Talking Tottenham - At The Lane,   White Hot Lane,
Come All Ye Faithful, Choirs of Angels.