Why Newcastle's St James' Park looks lopsided from the outside
St James' Park towers over one side of Newcastle and stays low on the other. The strange silhouette comes from more than a century of fights over land, with a listed Georgian terrace on one flank and protected common ground on another, and a club that repeatedly threatened to leave but never did.
Football has been played on this sloping former grazing field since 1880, when Newcastle Rangers used it. Newcastle West End followed, and when that club was wound up in 1892 its rival Newcastle East End took over the lease and soon became Newcastle United. Oddly for the home of the Black and Whites, the team wore red and white there until 1904. The Gallowgate End takes its name from the city gallows nearby, last used in 1844.
Neighbours shaped everything. Leazes Terrace, built around 1830 by architect Thomas Oliver and builder Richard Grainger and now Grade I listed, borders one side, while the Town Moor belongs to the city's Freemen and the council owns the site. Capacity reached 60,000 in 1905 with a showpiece new stand, but plans by Archibald Leitch in the 1920s shrank to a small roof, and stalled development cost Newcastle the chance to host 1966 World Cup group games.
Several escape plans followed. In the late 1960s the club looked at Gosforth and even sharing a new ground with Sunderland, until the sports minister Denis Howell brokered a deal in 1971. Work on the East Stand began in 1972, yet a demolished Leazes End sat unbuilt for years. After the 1985 Bradford fire exposed safety concerns, the West Stand was replaced by one named after Jackie Milburn.
Sir John Hall's takeover in 1992 finally unlocked money, fuelled by Kevin Keegan's successful team. By 1995 the ground held 36,610, and still sold out. The club then proposed a £65m, 55,000-seat stadium on neighbouring Leazes Park, part of the protected moor, but a petition of 36,000 signatures and the prospect of a long public inquiry killed it. Expanding upward on the existing site instead has left today's capacity of 52,719 and those uneven stands.
Source: St James' Park
