TOWNS of TWO HALVES A TOURIST’S GUIDE TO FOOTBALL TOWNS
David Guest
www.townsof2halves.co.uk Rosewood Publishing Ltd
TOWNS OF TWO HALVES www.townsof2halves.co.uk First published by Rosewood Publishing Ltd 2018 Copyright Š David Guest 2018 All rights reserved David Guest asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. The author and the publisher have done their best to ensure the accuracy of the contents of this book but can accept no responsibility for any loss or inconvenience suffered. ISBN 978-0-9956787-2-9 Ebook 978-0-9956787-3-6 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY Rosewood Publishing Ltd www.townsof2halves.co.uk By the same author A PRESSURE OF THE HAND
For Joe Royle, with thanks
Contents Introduction 6 Accrington Stanley 8 Arsenal 14 Aston Villa 17 Barnsley 20 Birmingham City 23 Blackburn Rovers 27 Blackpool 30 Bolton Wanderers 33 Bournemouth 36 Bradford City 39 Brentford 43 Brighton & Hove Albion 46 Bristol City 49 Bristol Rovers 53 Burnley 57 Burton Albion 60 Bury 69 Cambridge United 72 Cardiff City 75 Carlisle United 79 Charlton Athletic 85 Chelsea 89 Cheltenham Town 96 Colchester United 99 Coventry City 103 Crawley Town 106 Crewe Alexandra 109 Crystal Palace 112 Derby County 116 Doncaster Rovers 121 Everton 125
Exeter City 129 Fleetwood Town 133 Forest Green Rovers 135 Fulham 138 Gillingham 141 Grimsby Town 143 Huddersfield Town 147 Hull City 151 Ipswich Town 158 Leeds United 161 Leicester City 164 Lincoln City 169 Liverpool 173 Luton Town 176 Macclesfield Town 179 Manchester City 183 Manchester United 188 Mansfield Town 192 Middlesbrough 196 Millwall 202 Milton Keynes Dons 204 Morecambe 208 Newcastle United 213 Newport County 217 Northampton Town 224 Norwich City 228 Nottingham Forest 231 Notts County 235 Oldham Athletic 238 Oxford United 242 Peterborough United 248 Plymouth Argyle 250 Port Vale 253 Portsmouth 257
Under the names of the football clubs you’ll find information on what the relevant town has to offer tourists
Preston North End 261 Queens Park Rangers 264 Reading 267 Rochdale 271 Rotherham United 274 Scunthorpe United 277 Sheffield United 280 Sheffield Wednesday 285 Shrewsbury Town 288 Southampton 292 Southend United 296 Stevenage 299 Stoke City 302 Sunderland 307 Swansea City 312 Swindon Town 316 Tottenham Hotspur 319 Tranmere Rovers 322 Walsall 326 Watford 329 West Bromwich Albion 331 West Ham United 334 Wigan Athletic 337 Wimbledon 342 Wolverhampton Wanderers 347 Wycombe Wanderers 350 Yeovil Town 354 INDEX 358
Football Towns
Carlisle
• Newcastle • Sunderland
•
• Middlesbrough Morecambe
B la ck Ac b u r n cr i n B u g to n r nl ey Bra d fo rd
•
Fleetwood Blackpool •• Leeds Hull Preston • • • • •• • Bolton •Rochdale•Huddersfield Scunthorpe Barnsley • Liverpool • Wigan • •Bury• Oldham • • Doncaster• •Grimsby • Sheffield••Rotherham Tranmere• Manchester • Lincoln • Macclesfield • Mansfield Crewe • Burslem Stoke ••
• Nottingham • Burton •Leicester • • Norwich Peterborough • Walsall West Bromwich •• • Birmingham • Coventry • Cambridge • Northampton • Ipswich Milton Keynes • Stevenage • • Cheltenham Colchester • Oxford Wycombe •Luton • Nailsworth • Watford • • Southend • • Swansea • Newport Reading LONDON • Swindon • • •Bristol Cardiff • Gillingham Shrewsbury • Wolverhampton
Derby •
•
Crawley •
Yeovil • Exeter •
Bournemouth •
Southampton
• • •Brighton Portsmouth
• Plymouth Distance no object? Plan your awaydays and weekend breaks for the season
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TOWNS OF TWO HALVES
Introduction This is a book about football only in the sense that time spent watching football can easily feel like time wasted. Less long-winded than Marcel Proust but riddled with the same anxiety, the book tries to calm those nerves. There are two ways to tackle the problem. The more obvious is to ignore football altogether. That’s a rare example of cutting off your nose to spite your face and throwing it out with the bathwater. Alternatively you could take literally the idea of following your team. In casual conversation, ‘following’ a particular team demands no more of you than looking out for their results. But football, bless it, takes place all over the country in diverse cities, towns and suburbs, many of them unregarded. And when you look closely, each of the 92 places with a football league club turns out to have much more to offer. This, then, is a book about an accidental, self-service form of tourism. If it were a piece of academic reasearch it would grope hesitantly towards the conclusion that anywhere in the country might be a tourist destination. On that basis, your awaydays or city breaks will be to places like Accrington or Bradford rather than Amsterdam or Bruges, but the principle is much the same. Finding unexpectedly interesting things to do or to look at in ordinary places, you will notice that the tourism begins to take precedence over the football. The two hours that you would devote to a football match... Can you really spare that much time? I’d imagine it will take longer to reach that point if your team plays attractive, winning football. On the other hand, if you follow one of the big clubs you won’t always be able to get a ticket. In that event, the unique attractions of an unfamiliar town or city will be all the more important. At the very least, you may never visit the place again. Do you really want to come away from a town having seen no more of it than its football ground, its Wetherspoon’s and its shopping mall?
Introduction
7
Not a football book, then, but as a travel book it has serious shortcomings. It is by no means systematic. An authentic travel writer would have done a much more thorough job, the resultant work would run to a dozen volumes and it would be out of date within days of being printed. On which subject... The composition of the Football League changes every year. At the end of each season two teams drop out of League 2 and two from the National League (or whatever it happens to be called that year) take their places. To that extent, this book will be 2.17% out of date by May 2019. If any readers feel short-changed, I refer them to the book’s website: l
www.townsof2halves.co.uk
There they will find updates where necessary and additional material. The website will also include links to places listed in the book. Another risk of printing almost any kind of information, with the best will in the world, is that things change. Where I’ve mentioned a particular price or an opening time, it has usually been for the sake of illustration or emphasis; please don’t rely on it still applying. And in most of the book I’m referring to the towns as I found them on the day of my visit. That was usually the date of the football match at the foot of each chapter. I’d make that clear in the text each time, but to do it here saves having to say “on the day I was there” on every other page. There are, inevitably, some elements of a memoir. The matches I’ve attended go back to the early 1960s. The book is a record of what I have done with at least 92 days of my life – 1/250th, I estimate. I can’t decide whether this was time well spent. It’s a startling statistic, though, and one to consider carefully before going to a football match again.
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TOWNS OF TWO HALVES
Accrington Stanley “I wouldn’t trust anybody in Accrington with that,” the young man said. “Keep it with you.” ‘That’ was a rucksack. I’d arrived at Accy on the Lancashire altiplano with an overnight bag. I was looking for a way to avoid lugging it around all day. The youth with the low opinion of his fellow citizens was as close as Accrington had that afternoon to an Information Centre. Outside the Town Hall the universal ‘i’ sign was on display, but anyone lured in by it was intercepted by this youth and turned away: the hall was closed for a private party. He had the weary indifference of the local council factotum, and his outfit – neither a suit nor a uniform – matched the building itself: smart enough, but with a top half apparently designed by someone unable to see the bottom half. As he ushered me from the premises I asked whether he could suggest anywhere in town to leave a rucksack for half a day: a hotel, perhaps, or the police station. Left luggage is a serious problem in our Orwellian age of perpetual conflict. His mistrust was misplaced, as Accrington promptly demonstrated. The bag contained nothing of any value: some clothes ready for washing, basic toiletries and a couple of second-hand books. Entrusting it to anyone, anywhere, would not have entailed much of a risk. Just a few minutes later, at another Accrington service desk, I asked if they could help. The young man there didn’t have to think about it for long. “What you could do,” he suggested, “is leave it lying around, as it were, and we’d have to put it over there [he indicated a corner of a table] as Lost Property. Then you’d come back later on and reclaim it. If there was a supervisor here, you might lay it on a bit. ‘What am I like?’ you might say, that sort of thing.” He smiled broadly. “What time do you close?” I asked. “Six o’clock,” he replied. “I finish at three, but I’ll let the guy who takes over know what’s going on and it’ll be there when you come for it.”
Accrington Stanley
look.
9
And so it was, with no sign that anybody had given it a second
The rucksack had already accompanied me on the first of the day’s excursions. The stop before Accrington on the railway line into the Pennines from Preston is for Church & Oswaldtwistle. Vaguely aware of Oswaldtwistle Mills and happy to explore aspects of my Lancastrian heritage, I left the train there. As promised, Oswaldtwistle Mills was only three minutes’ walk from the station. It was not, however, a heritage site; it was a shopping village. People visiting an area for the first and possibly only time may be as interested in shopping opportunities as in galleries, museums, cathedrals etc. Or more so. I entered Oswaldtwistle Mills in a glass-half-full spirit. Besides, I’d had no breakfast. As it turned out there were heritage displays in the Mills. On the threshold of a soft furnishings section, a sign proclaiming ‘Textile Museum’ pointed to a slim doorway protected by a grubby PVC strip curtain. Within, the Textile Museum lived up to this unpromising start. In places the warp and weft of the cobwebs provided a fitting 21st century commentary on the fate of the Lancashire textile industry. It wasn’t a bad museum, just small, neglected and confined to dark, ill-favoured spaces (thus replicating the atmosphere of the original mills, perhaps, though without the noise, dust and general threats to health). The transition from cottage industry to Industrial Revolution was explained clearly enough, and there were machines standing motionless and silent, like a line of dinosaur skeletons, in one workshop. The main distinction of the Oswaldtwistle area is that James Hargreaves, inventor of the Spinning Jenny, was from these parts. Local reaction to his invention was so un-neighbourly that the family removed to Nottingham for its own safety. There was a glorious hand-written correction to one of the commentary panels on this subject. Describing the irruption of a furious mob into the Hargreaves’ cottage, the text dropped an aitch in its excitement and a capital ‘H’ had been grafted by hand on to the front of ‘argreaves’.
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TOWNS OF TWO HALVES
Back in the retail experience, signs leading to Toilets and Victorian Arcade delivered another heritage bonus. Off the Arcade, a room offered a more extensive chronological treatment of the Oswaldtwistle story, from archaeological beginnings to close to the present. This introduced Oswald, King of Northumbria in the seventh century. A ‘twistle’, it claimed, was the meeting place of two streams, but you may prefer to think of the sainted Oswald (as he became in the Middle Ages) as some sort of Dark Ages Roger Whittaker, putting his lips together and blowing to keep his spirits up. This room also held particularly fine scale models of beam engines, and a less detailed but equally evocative model of the mills of Clayton-le-Moors in about 1920. The career of Robert Peel was celebrated – not the famous Prime Minister and founder of the Metropolitan Police, but his grandfather, a man whose innovative use of vegetable motifs in calico printing led to him becoming known as ‘Parsley Peel’. Did he ever experiment with anything that actually had to be peeled? We weren’t told. Finally, this display introduced what became a theme of the day: the Accrington Pals, the 11th (Service) Battalion (Accrington) East Lancashire Regiment. This was one of the battalions raised in the early days of World War I in response to Kitchener’s call for volunteers. On 8 September 1914 the Accrington newspaper reported the proposal to form a local unit; by 24 September the Accrington battalion had almost reached full strength (1,100 men). Training occupied most of 1915. The battalion’s first major action was an attack on the fortified village of Serre, on the opening day of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916. The first troops went over the top at 7.20am and by 8am, according to the Pals website, the battle was effectively over. Of about 720 Accrington Pals who took part in the attack, 584 were killed, wounded or missing. Brigadier-General HC Rees said: “Not a man wavered, broke the ranks or attempted to go back. I have never seen, indeed could never have imagined such a magnificent display of gallantry, discipline and determination.” You’ll encounter the Pals again in the Hyndburn Heritage
Accrington Stanley
11
Museum, in Accrington’s Arndale Centre. That local initiative is mainly about artefacts and the daily lives of the different kinds of people who used them. There are also reminders of other Accrington distinctions: l The Ewbanks carpet-sweeper l The invention of Terylene l And the Accrington NORI brick, supposedly the hardest in the building world, used in the foundations of Blackpool Tower and the Empire State Building. After Oswaldtwistle, NORI is the second of the day’s etymological teasers. The brick is said to be ironhard, and the word IRON, carelessly not reversed in the moulds, left the legend NORI on the bricks that came out of them. Or so they say. Accrington’s brightest, most surprising cultural jewel is the Haworth Gallery, perhaps 10 minutes out of the town centre by bus towards Bury or Rochdale. Sit on the left-hand side so that as the bus leaves the town you can admire the remarkable and wholly unexpected avenues ascending the slopes to the east, seeming to disappear eventually in distant coniferous woodland. The Pennines redeem many a view in East Lancs. The Gallery is in Haworth Park, where you will also find a rose garden. Here a cherry blossom commemorates the Queen’s diamond jubilee in 2013 – she visited Accrington that year – and two oaks are dedicated to the Accrington Pals. In the woodland, students from the nearby college have built a memorial to the Pals identical to one in Serre. The house, in the Arts & Crafts style, was bequeathed to the people of Accrington in 1920; which is only appropriate, since the sweat of the local textile workers would have paid for it in the first place. Most of the exhibition space is on the first floor. Pride of place goes to Europe’s largest public collection of Tiffany glass. “Have you been here before?” the lady on the front desk asked me. “No, it’s my first time in Accrington,” I said. “Did you come specially for the Tiffany?” “No,” I said. Sensing that I might as well have been visiting
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TOWNS OF TWO HALVES
Index Adnams, Marion 119 Adventure Island, Southend 296 Alfred the Great 67, 242 Alice in Wonderland 247 American Civil War 271 Animals Horniman, Forest Hill 113
Aquariums 33, 37, 55
Horniman, Forest Hill 113 National Marine Aquarium, Plymouth 251 Sea Life Adventure, Southend 297 The Deep, Hull 153
Archaeology 101, 344
Ashmolean, Oxford 245 Cotswolds 98 Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, Cambridge 72 Museum of Classical Archaeology, Cambridge 72
Architecture 24
Art Deco 16, 78, 210 Arts & Crafts 11, 25 Edwardian 338 Georgian 120, 270 Gothic 197 Italianate 345 Jacobean 215 Machicolation 294 Modern 24, 200 Neo-Classical 126, 147 Palladian 275 Regency 97 Victorian 8, 29, 41, 184, 199, 236, 244, 254, 309
Armfield, Jimmy 32 Armitage Shanks 154 Art 20, 196
20th Century British 105, 199, 222, 237, 317 Bloomsbury Group 148 British Surrealists 304 Eastern Art 246 German Expressionists 166 Pre-Raphaelite 24, 81, 186 Scottish Colourists 304
Artillery 224 Aurochs 220 Austen, Jane 293 Avebury Stone Circle 53 Aviaries 37, 226 Awards 281 Axolotl 309
Babbage, Charles 320 Banksy Walking Tour 56
Bayeux Replica 268 Beauty Parlour Syndrome 248 Becket, Thomas 226 Bede 310 Belgrave Mela 165 Bell, Vanessa 22 Belsky, Franta 299 Bennett, Arnold 254 Best, George 138 Betjeman, Sir John 297 Bible 42, 204, 275, 334 Blackburn Beverley 29 Blackhall, Amy-Jane 148 Blackpool Pleasure Beach 31 Blue Streak 165 Bobbin, Tim 271 Bonnie Prince Charlie 120 Boudicca 100 Bowles, Stan 265 BrontĂŤ, Charlotte 40 Bryson, Bill 212 Burton, Richard 90, 313 Buxton, Albert Sorby 193 Byron 193 Cabinets of Curiosities
Hossack Collection, Lincoln 171 Tolson, Huddersfield 149
Caerleon-on-Usk 217 Canaletto 21 Canals
Caldon 304 Exeter Ship Canal 131 Grand Union 43, 106 Wendover Arm 350
Huddersfield Broad 150 Leeds & Liverpool 27, 339 Rochdale 183 Trent & Mersey 65
Castles 71, 76, 79
Colchester 100 Exeter 131 Leicester 167 Lincoln 170 Newcastle 213 Newport 221 Northampton 227 Nottingham 236 Rochester 141 Sherbourne 354
Cathedrals
Blackburn 28 Bradford 42 Carlisle 81 Coventry 105 Derby 118 Exeter 129 Leicester 168 Lincoln 169
Index
Liverpool Anglican 127 Liverpool Roman Catholic 127 Newcastle 215 Northampton Roman Catholic 226 Oxford 247 Peterborough 248 Rochester 142
Caves, Mines & Tunnels 130, 141, 235, 236 Celtic Manor 217 Ceramics 21, 145, 308 Ballantyne Collection 237 Christopher Dresser 198 De Morgan 21 Iris & John Fox Collection 222 John & Elizabeth Wait Collection 222 Linthorpe 198 Marcel Duchamps 154 Martinware 344 Middleport Burleigh 255 Moorcroft 21 Picasso 166 Rockingham 276
Chapman, Herbert 16 Chartists 186, 221, 255 Chaucer 285 Chow, Stanley 186 Churches
All Saints, Kingston 344 Holy Trinity, Hull 155 St Hilda, Middlesbrough 201 St John the Baptist, Cardiff 77 St Mary the Virgin, Shrewsbury 289 St Michael & All Angels, East Coker 354 St Peter, Wolverhampton 348
Civil War 101, 236 Cleethorpes 143 Clocks 15, 101, 130, 136, 294 Cobridge Hall, Burslem 253 Colours 103, 228 Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 114, 251 Constable, John 21, 70 Coronation Stone 342 Crowd Behaviour Abuse 57, 211, 302 Humour 18, 79, 125, 157, 203 Pitch invasions 99, 178 Sympathy 103
Cuisine
French 75 Thai 72
Cultural Centres Hindu 33 Sikh 117
Curry Capital of Britain 165 Darwin, Charles 288 Davies, WH 220 Dibnah, Fred 33 Dickens, Charles 29, 141, 300, 320
13
Dinosaurs 166, 198, 214, 244, 308 Disraeli, Benjamin 350 Dresser, Dr Christopher 198 Duchamp, Marcel 154 DĂźrer, Albrecht 135, 246 Egyptian Remains 20, 21, 22, 25, 119, 166, 181, 225, 272, 337 West Park Museum, Macclesfield 182
Eleanor of Castile 169 Eliot, TS 65, 354 Engels, Friedrich 148 Epstein, Sir Jacob 16, 25, 70, 148 Fairbank, William 169 Farms 16, 21 Feats Flying Men 289 Walking 179
Festivals 296
Katharine of Aragon, Peterborough 249 Music 162, 288 Shrewsbury Flower Show 288
Fields, Gracie 270 Five Towns 254 Folklore
Black Agnes 167 Green Man 130 Jack of the Clocks 130 Jenny Greenteeth 28 Old Bloody Bones 28
Football History
Floodlights 318 Founders 13, 29 Records 185, 316, 319 Rules 72
Freud, Lucien 154, 317 Fry, Roger 148 Galleries
20/21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe 279 Ashmolean, Oxford 245 Baltic, Gateshead 215 Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre 70 Cooper, Barnsley 22 Derby Museum & Art Gallery 119 Ferens, Hull 153 Fountain17, Hull 154 Haworth, Accrington 11 Herbert, Coventry 105 Huddersfield Library & Art Gallery 148 Laing, Newcastle 215 Leeds 162 Leeds College of Art 162 Manchester Art Gallery 186 Middlesbrough Inst of Modern Art 199 National Glass Centre, Sunderland 310 National Museum, Cardiff 77 New, Walsall 327
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