The Gay Meadow is the former home ground of Shrewsbury Town FC, a football club in England. It was situated just outside the town centre of Shrewsbury, on the banks of the River Severn and it opened in August 1910. The ground closed in June 2007, at the end of the 2006-07 Football League season, as the club moved to a new stadium, provisionally titled 'The New Meadow', on the outskirts of the town.
Because it had only one entrance/exit road, in the years following the Taylor Report, the capacity of the ground was reduced from its original 16,000 to around 8,000 which, depending on the nature of the match, was distributed amongst the various areas of the ground accordingly. The official record attendance is 18,917, gained on 26 April 1961 against local rivals Walsall. (Local legend says over 22,000 were estimated to be inside the stadium in the league match against Wrexham A.F.C on 21 August 1950 which Shrewsbury won 2-1, although the official figure is actually given as 16,000).
Read more about Gay Meadow: Early History of The Gay Meadow, General Overview, The Move To New Meadow, End of Gay Meadow
Famous quotes containing the words gay and/or meadow:
“Sport is the bloom and glow of a perfect health. The great will not condescend to take anything seriously; all must be as gay as the song of a canary, though it were the building of cities, or the eradication of old and foolish churches and nations, which have cumbered the earth long thousands of years.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We are a meadow where the bees hum:
mind and body are almost one”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)