17 February 2006
Britain's first great football ground designer
The work of the man who shaped most of Britain’s great football grounds will be explored in a lecture at the University of Dundee next week.
Scotsman Archibald Leitch defined the distinctive look of British football grounds during the first half of the 20th Century, and at one point had over half of the top division clubs in England among his clients as well as having other work closer to home, including the surviving main stand at Dens Park in Dundee.
Leitch’s work will be examined by writer Simon Inglis, editor of the Played In Britain series, in his lecture at Duncan of Jordanstone College on Tuesday, part of the current series of the Dundee Conservation Lectures.
Leitch, who was born in Glasgow, did his first stadium designs for Rangers and Kilmarnock, and by the mid 1920s over half of the first division football clubs in England, including Liverpool, Everton, Chelsea, Fulham and Southampton, were among his clients.
He designed the first Old Trafford in 1910. Closer to home, in addition to Ibrox he designed the national stadium, Hampden, and stadia for Hearts, Dundee and Hamilton. Born in 1865, Leitch died in London in 1939.
Today, only 11 of his football stands survive, but in varying condition. Ibrox and Craven Cottage now enjoy statutory protection and are reasonably secure, while Everton’s Goodison Park has a good Leitch stand but only the cores of Leitch stands survive at White Hart Lane and Anfield. Even closer to home, Dundee’s main stand is another important Arhchibald Leitch survivor and, while it cannot claim to be his most sophisticated work, unlike some of the others it is in good shape having been extensively refurbished some ten years ago.
Simon Inglis is a writer and architectural historian who since the Hillsborough disaster has sat on various advisory bodies on stadium design. He is a passionate and entertaining speaker on Britain’s sporting heritage.
As editor of the "Played in Britain" series, Simon Inglis has contributed a number of titles to the series including Engineering Archie, a study of Archibald Leitch’s life and work.
The lecture takes place at 6 pm in Lecture Theatre 5013 at Duncan of Jordanstone College, Perth Road, Dundee. For members of the public there is a £5 entry fee, students and sponsors of the programme are admitted free.
NOTES TO EDITORS
In 2002, to coincide with the Commonwealth Games, English Heritage launched a pilot study of Manchester to begin to determine the extent and level of risk to Britain’s sporting heritage. British sportsmen and women invented, codified and exported many of the sports played at international level today. Those sports we didn’t actually invent, we often honed for mass consumption and enjoyment. The list is awesome: football, rugby (league and union), cricket, tennis (real and lawn), hockey, billiards and snooker, bowls (flat and crown green), fives (Eton, Winchester and Rugby), badminton, water polo, golf, squash... The anticipated result of the study is a series of books called Played in Britain, the first of which, Played in Manchester appeared in 2004. Further titles are planned including played in Birmingham, Liverpool and, in 2007, Glasgow.
Glasgow will be a particularly fitting subject because it can lay reasonable claim to be the home of the world’s first great football grounds, Ibrox Park, Celtic Park and Hampden. In 1914 the combined capacity of the three was in excess of 200,000.
For more information contact:
Roddy Isles
Head of Press
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
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