Burnden Park

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Burnden Park was the home of English FA Premier League football team Bolton Wanderers F.C. between 1895 and 1997.

1 Location
2 History
3 Today
4 References

[edit] Location

Situated in the Burnden area of Bolton - approximately two miles from the centre of the town - the ground served as the spiritual home of the town's football team for 102 years. It also hosted the replay of the 1901 FA Cup final, in which Tottenham Hotspur beat Sheffield United 3-1^[1].

[edit] History

The Railway End of Burnden Park was seen in the 1962 film A Kind of Loving, starring Alan Bates and June Ritchie.

Burnden Park was also the scene of the Burnden Park Disaster. On 9 March 1946, crowd congestion led to 33 Bolton Wanderers F.C. spectators losing their lives through asphyxiation and hundreds suffering injuries in a crowd estimated to be in excess of 85,000 people, whilst watching their team take on Stoke City F.C. in the Sixth Round second-leg of the FA Cup ^[2]. In terms of scale it was the worst disaster to hit British football stadia until the Ibrox disaster in 1971.

The disaster led to the Moelwyn Hughes's official report, which recommended limitations on crowd sizes ^[3]

In its heyday, Burnden Park could hold up to 60,000 supporters but this figure was dramatically reduced during the final 20 years of its life, mainly because of new legislation which saw virtually all English stadiums reduce their capacities for safety reasons. A section of terracing at the ground was sold off in 1986 to make way for a new Normid superstore (which later closed) and the club's directors had decided by 1992 that it would be difficult to convert Burnden Park into an all-seater stadium. It was decided to build a new multi-million pound 27,000-seat stadium - the Reebok Stadium - at nearby Lostock and the relocation went ahead in 1997, despite the sadness of many fans. For some years, the site suffered. Gypsies camped in the car park of the derelict Normid superstore and Burnden Park itself fell into disrepair. As one of the main routes into town, the site needed to be redeveloped.

[edit] Today

There is now a large Asda superstore on the site, which opened in 2005 after taking over the Big W. A Co-op travel agents can be found at the front, a Subway restaurant and a new JJB fitness centre/sports store has also been relocated here to make a significant, out of town development.