White Hart Lane

White Hart Lane was a football stadium in Tottenham, North London and the home of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club from 1899 to 2017. Its capacity varied over the years; when changed to all-seater it had a capacity of 36,284. The stadium was fully demolished after the end of the 2016–17 season.

The stadium hosted 2,533 competitive Spurs games in its 118-year history. It was also used for England national football matches and England under-21 football matches. White Hart Lane once had a capacity of nearly 80,000 with attendances in the early 1950s that reached the 70,000s, but as seating was introduced, the stadium's capacity decreased to a modest number in comparison to other Premier League clubs. The record attendance at the ground was 75,038, for an FA Cup tie on 5 March 1938 against Sunderland. Tottenham's final game at White Hart Lane was played on 14 May 2017 with a 2–1 victory against Manchester United.

Tottenham's new home, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, has a capacity of 62,850 and was designed by Populous. It was built in almost the same location as White Hart Lane, instead of moving elsewhere within or away from the borough of Haringey. While the replacement stadium was under construction, all Tottenham home games in the 2017–18 season as well as all but five in 2018–19 were played at Wembley Stadium. After two successful test events, Tottenham Hotspur officially moved into the new ground on 3 April 2019.

When the club was first formed in 1882, the club played its matches on public land at the Park Lane end of Tottenham Marshes. As the ground was on public land, the club could not charge admission fees for spectators, and while the number of spectators grew to a few thousand within a few years, it yielded no gate receipts. In 1888, the club rented a pitch between numbers 69 and 75 Northumberland Park at a cost of £17 per annum, with the spectators charged 3d a game. The first stand with just over 100 seats and changing rooms underneath was built on the ground for the 1894–95 season. Overcrowding at the ground however became an issue; in 1898, during a match against Woolwich Arsenal attended by a record crowd of 15,000, the refreshment stand collapsed when fans climbed up onto its roof, prompting the club to start looking for a new ground. In 1899, the club moved a short distance to a piece of land behind the White Hart pub.

The new location was to the east of Tottenham High Road. The site was formerly used as a nursery owned by the brewery company Charringtons. The ground was leased from Charringtons with the proviso that Spurs must guarantee crowds of 1,000 for first-team matches and 500 for the reserves, easily achievable when the average attendance of Tottenham's matches was 4,000. A groundsman at a local cricket club, John Over, was tasked with demolishing the greenhouses and preparing a playing surface for football. The stands from the previous ground at Northumberland Park were moved to the new ground. The new ground was never officially named, although names such as Gilpin Park and Percy Park were suggested. In its early days it was normally referred to as the Hotspur's or Spurs' Ground by the club or the High Road Ground by the public, in time it became popularly known as White Hart Lane, which is in fact the name of the street on the western side of High Road, away from the ground. It is however unclear how it became so-named; some thought that it acquired the name because spectators would first meet up at the White Hart Lane railway station, another suggestion is that it referred to the lane leading to the stadium entrance beside the White Hart pub later officially named Bill Nicholson Way.

The first game at the Lane to mark its opening was a friendly against Notts County on 4 September 1899, with around 5,000 supporters attending, generating a gate receipt of £115. The first goal at the Lane came from Tommy McCairns of Notts County, followed by an equaliser from Tom Pratt and a hat-trick from David Copeland, ending in a 4–1 home win. The first competitive game on the ground was held five days later in front of an 11,000 crowd against Queens Park Rangers, which Spurs won 1–0 with the only goal scored by Tom Smith.

By 1904, the ground had an overall capacity of 32,000, with a main stand that provided seating for 500, and covered accommodation for 12,000. In February 1904, overcrowding during an FA Cup match against Aston Villa led to the abandonment of the match and a pitch invasion by fans, resulting in the club being fined and ordered to erect a steel fence around the pitch. The ground needed to be expanded; although a large earth bank was built at the Park Lane end in 1904, the club's ability to develop the White Hart Lane site was restricted by the terms of the ground lease with Charringtons. Following a share issue, the club bought the freehold for £8,900 in 1905. An additional £2,600 was used to purchase the land at the northern (Paxton Road) end, where another large bank was built the same year to match the one at the Park Lane end, bringing the capacity up to 40,000. Spurs were admitted to the Second Division of the Football League in 1908, and they played their first league game on 1 September 1908 against Wolverhampton Wanderers at White Hart Lane. Spurs won 3–0, and the first Football League goal at the ground was scored by Vivian Woodward.

White Hart Lane was redeveloped in the early 20th century, and its stands were rebuilt over a period of two and a half decades based on designs by the stadium architect Archibald Leitch. The first to be designed, the main West Stand, was a two-tiered structure with seating for 5,300 in the upper tier and a paddock in front with standing room for over 6,000. The roof covered the whole stand and featured a mock-Tudor gable, emblazoned with the club's name. At the time of its construction, it was the largest stand at a British football ground. Built at a cost of £50,000, the West Stand opened on 11 September 1909 for Spurs' first home game in Division One, which was a match against Manchester United that ended in a 2–2 draw. The central section of the East Stand was also covered in 1909; two years later its wooden terrace was replaced by an enlarged concrete terrace, with the roof extended to cover the whole stand. With further expansion of the banking at the two ends, the stadium capacity increased to over 50,000 by the onset of the First World War. During the war, the stadium was taken over by the Ministry of War and the East Stand was turned into a factory for making gas masks, gunnery and protection equipment.