St James' Park

From Free net encyclopedia

This page is about the football stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne. For the park in London, see St James's Park; for the football stadium in Exeter, see St James Park.

St. James' Park
Image:St James' Park.jpg
Facility Statistics
Location	Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Capacity	52,387
Opened	1891
Renovated	2001
Surface	Grass pitch
Owner	Newcastle United F.C.

St James' Park is a 52,387 capacity all-seater football stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne, England and is the home of Newcastle United F.C. The four sides of the ground are known as the Gallowgate end (officially the Newcastle Brown Ale Stand), the Leazes end (officially the Sir John Hall Stand), the Milburn Stand (after 1950s legend Jackie Milburn) and the East Stand.

It was first used by Newcastle United in 1891 after the unification of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End, although football had been played there since 1880.

The ground received only modest expansion until the early 1990s when businessman Sir John Hall invested heavily in the club. By 1995 the stadium had reached a capacity of 36,000 seats. However this was still not enough for the club's fan base, hence plans were drawn to move to a new stadium in nearby Leazes Park. These plans fell through due to political wranglings. Instead the club decided to expand the current St. James' Park by adding extra tiers to the Leazes Stand and the Milburn Stand.

The upper tiers on the West and North sides of the ground were completed in July 2000, with seats and executive boxes also installed.

Executive boxes in the East Stand were demolished and replaced by seating blocks from pitch level up to the existing rows, in a mirror image of the Milburn stand, increasing capacity to approximately 52,387.

The cost of the new construction work was estimated at £42 million, significantly higher than the proposed Leazes Park stadium. Although the stadium appears severely lop-sided when viewed from the outside, the bottom tier of the four stands does create an integral rectangular bowl around the stadium, with the newer stands rising above this on three sides. The scope for further expansion is limited by a road facing the Gallowgate end and listed buildings behind the East Stand.

The club also purchased the land around and above the St. James' Metro station, with the eventual aim of building hotel and conference facilities. In 2005, a new bar was built beneath the upper tier of the Gallowgate end, named "Shearer's'" after Newcastle legend Alan Shearer.

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Trivia

The stadium hosted three matches during Euro 1996. Along with Elland Road it was designated Group B which comprised France, Spain, Romania and Bulgaria.

St. James' Park is set to host some football matches in the 2012 Summer Olympics

While the name of the stadium does not take an 's' after the apostrophe, in earlier years it generally did; indeed match day programmes printed up until the late 1940s have it written as St James's Park.

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