Valley Parade - History

History

Manningham Rugby Football Club, formed in 1876, originally played games at Cardigan Fields, in the Carlisle Road area of Bradford. When their ground was sold to facilitate the construction of Drummond School, the club required a new home. Consequently, they bought one-third of the Valley Parade site in Manningham, taking a short-term lease out on the rest of the land in time to play there for the 1886–87 season. The new ground and the road it was built upon both adopted the name of the local area, Valley Parade, a name deriving from the steep hillside below Manningham. The land was previously a quarry, and formed part of a greater site owned by Midland Railway Company.

The club spent £1,400 appointing designers to oversee the excavation and levelling of the land, and moved a one-year-old stand from Carlisle Road to the highest part of the new ground. The original ground comprised the relocated stand, a 2,000-capacity stepped enclosure with the players' changing rooms beneath the stand, the playing area, a cinder athletics track and fencing to limit the total capacity to 18,000. The playing field was made of ballast, ashes, soil and sods. The ground was officially opened on 27 September 1886 for a game against Wakefield Trinity which was watched by a capacity crowd, but construction work meant most of Manningham's early games were away fixtures.

Manningham RFC continued playing until 1903, when financial difficulties, caused by relegation at the turn of the century, prompted club officials to change codes from rugby football to association football. The first association football game to be played at Valley Parade was a promotional fixture on 6 April 1903 between a side of West Yorkshire footballers and Sheffield United's 1903 FA Cup winning side. The game had been organised to stimulate interest in the sport in Bradford and attracted 8,000 fans. The new football club, Bradford City, were elected to The Football League's Division Two the following month. Bradford City's first game at Valley Parade came on 5 September 1903 against Gainsborough Trinity, drawing a crowd of 11,000. As a result of alterations first implemented in 1897, City players originally changed in a shed behind one end of the ground, and visiting teams used the old rugby club dressing rooms at the back of the nearby Belle Vue Hotel. However, after City's 5–1 defeat by Manchester United on 10 February 1906, United player Bob Bonthron was attacked as he left the ground. As a result The Football Association closed the ground for 14 days, ordering City to switch its changing rooms to the nearby Artillery Barracks for the 1906–07 season. Several supporters faced criminal proceedings for the incident.

After Bradford City won the Division Two championship in 1907–08, the club hurried through a reconstruction programme of the ground to prepare for the club's first season in Division One. Football architect Archibald Leitch was commissioned to design new terracing in the paddock—a standing area in front of the 5,300-seater main stand which was built in 1908—and build a Spion Kop at the north side of the ground and an 8,000-capacity stand at the Midland Road end opposite the main stand. Further work was performed to lower the railings, erect barriers, move the pitch and add extra turnstiles. The changing rooms were also moved, with a tunnel leading from the rooms underneath the Kop along the main stand side of the ground. The total project cost £9,958, and raised the capacity to 40,000. The work was not completed until midway through the 1908–09 season. The first match after work was finished took place on Christmas Day 1908, when 36,000 fans saw City host Bristol City. The improvements allowed Bradford City to set their record attendance of 39,146 on 11 March 1911 against Burnley during the club's FA Cup winning run. It is the longest surviving attendance record at any league ground in the country.

On 17 March 1932, Bradford City paid Midland Railway Company £3,750 for the remaining two-thirds of the site to become outright owners of the ground, which was now 45 years old. The stadium had remained virtually unchanged since 1908, and did so until 1952, when the capacity of the ground was reduced after examinations of the foundations were ordered following the 1946 Burnden Park disaster. The investigation resulted in the closure of half the Midland Road stand. The stand's steel frame was then sold to Berwick Rangers for £450 and a smaller replacement stand was built at Valley Parade in 1954. Six years later, the stand had to be demolished for a second time because of continuing foundation problems. It was another six years before all four stands at Valley Parade were able to be opened for the first time. To enable construction of a new stand on the Midland Road side of the ground, the club directors moved the pitch 3 yards (2.7 m) closer to the main stand. The new stand was then the narrowest stand in the league. Further improvements were made to the stand in 1969, ready for the club's FA Cup tie with Division One side Tottenham Hotspur on 3 January 1970, which ended in a 2–2 draw in front of 23,000 fans. The cost of the work forced the club to sell Valley Parade to Bradford Corporation for £35,000, but it was bought back by 1979 for the same price.

During the period from 1908 to 1985, the club carried out a number of other lesser work to the rest of the ground. It also included the introduction of floodlights in English football. Valley Parade's first floodlights cost £3,000 and were lamps mounted on telegraph poles running along each side of the ground. They were originally used against Hull City on 20 December 1954. The floodlights were replaced in 1960 and again used for the first time against Hull City, but when one fell over in 1962, an FA Cup game with Gateshead had to go ahead with only three pylons, prompting an FA inquiry. In 1985, football ground writer Simon Inglis described the view from the main stand, which was still the same as when it was developed in 1908, as "like watching football from the cockpit of a Sopwith Camel" because of its antiquated supports and struts.

On 11 May 1985, one of the worst sporting disasters occurred at Valley Parade. Fifty-six people died and at least 265 were injured when the main stand was engulfed by fire. The fire started 40 minutes into the club's final game of the 1984–85 season against Lincoln City and destroyed the main stand in just nine minutes. For the next season and the first five months of the 1986–87 season, Bradford City played home games at Leeds United's Elland Road, Huddersfield Town's Leeds Road and Bradford Northern's Odsal Stadium, while Valley Parade was rebuilt. Huddersfield-based firm J Wimpenny carried out the £2.6 million work, which included funding from insurance pay-outs, Football League stadium grants, club funds and a £1.46 million Government loan obtained by two Bradford MPs, Geoffrey Lawler and Max Madden. A new 5,000 all-seater main stand was built, longer than the structure which had burned down. The Kop was also covered for the first time and increased to a 7,000 capacity. Other minor work was carried out to the ground's other two stands. On 14 December 1986, 582 days after the fire, The Hon Sir Oliver Popplewell, who had conducted the inquiry into the fire, opened the new stadium before an exhibition match against an England international XI. It was first used for a league game on Boxing Day when City lost 1–0 to Derby County.

The two stands which were not altered after the fire were both improved during the 1990s. The Bradford end of the ground was made a double-decker, all-seater stand, with a new scoreboard, in 1991. City's promotion to Division One in 1996 meant that chairman Geoffrey Richmond announced the construction of a 4,500 seater stand on the Midland Road side. It was first used for a Yorkshire derby against Sheffield United on Boxing Day 1996, before being officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 27 March 1997. Richmond continued his plans to redevelop the ground as City continued to rise through the league. The roof of the Kop, which was the largest safe-standing terrace in the country at the time, was removed and the capacity reduced during City's 1998–99 promotion season, to prepare for a summer £6.5 million rebuilding programme. The Kop was converted into a two-tier 7,500-seat capacity stand. An additional 2,300-seat capacity corner section was built, which filled in the corner between the main stand and Kop. When opened in December 2000 it took the capacity of Valley Parade to more than 20,000 for the first time since 1970. A suite of offices and a shop were added at the same time. Once the work was completed, a second tier was added to the main stand at the cost of £6.5 million. It was opened in 2001, increasing the main stand's capacity to 11,000, and the ground's capacity to 25,000.

Richmond also planned to increase the main stand's capacity by a further 1,800 seats by building new changing rooms and office blocks, and add a second tier to the Midland Road stand, to increase the ground capacity to more than 35,000. However, the club went into administration in May 2002, and Richmond was replaced by new co-owners Julian Rhodes and Gordon Gibb. The following year, Valley Parade was sold to Gibb's pension fund for £5 million, with the club's offices, shop and car park sold to London-based Development Securities for an additional £2.5 million. Bradford City's annual rent bill in 2011 to Gibb's pension fund is £370,000. The total budget for the year, including other rent payments, rates, maintenance and utility bills is £1.25 million.

The ground has been renamed a number of times for sponsorship reasons. Sponsors have included The Pulse radio station, Bradford & Bingley and Intersonic. The ground has been named the Coral Windows Stadium since July 2007 in a three-year deal, but is still commonly known throughout football as Valley Parade.