History
The land which Grace Road is built on was bought by Leicestershire County Cricket Club in 1877 from the then Duke of Rutland and spent the massive sum of £40,000 on developing a cricket club, athletic track and hotel. The first match played on the ground took place three months later, when Leicestershire beat the touring Australia team. Contrary to popular belief, the road was named after a local property owner, not W. G. Grace.
Leicestershire left the Grace Road site in 1901 due to lack of public transport to the ground causing low crowds. They moved to a site near to Aylestone Road, as it was closer to the city centre. Leicestershire did eventually return to Grace Road after the end of the Second World War in 1946 and have been based there ever since, buying the land back in 1966.
The record attendance is 16,000 who watched the match against the touring 1948 Australians.
Read more about this topic: Grace Road
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“If you look at history you’ll find that no state has been so plagued by its rulers as when power has fallen into the hands of some dabbler in philosophy or literary addict.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)