White Hart Lane was a football stadium in Tottenham, North London and the home of Tottenham Hotspur 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. After two successful test events, Tottenham Hotspur officially moved into the new ground on 3 April 2019.
History Origin 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.
Redevelopment
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.
The pitch was overlooked by a bronze fighting cock (the club symbol) that kept an eye on proceedings from the roof of the touchline stands. The cockerel was adopted as an emblem for the club as Harry Hotspur, after whom the club was named, wore spurs to make his horse go faster as he charged in battles, and spurs are also associated with fighting cocks. The original cockerel on a ball was erected in 1909 and was cast by William James Scott, who had played for the club when it was an amateur club. It was originally located atop the West Stand but was removed in 1957 for the upgrading of floodlighting and reappeared on top of the East Stand in December 1958. In 1989, the original cockerel was removed to be replaced by fibreglass replicas that were placed on top of both the East Stand and West Stand. The original cockerel was moved to the executive suites, where it stayed for many years, then to the West Stand reception. It was moved to the club offices at Lilywhite House in 2016 as the stadium was due to be demolished for redevelopment.
The ground continued to be renovated in the 1920s and early 1930s, with three more stands designed by Archibald Leitch. The FA Cup win in 1921 provided money to build a covered, two-tiered terrace at the Paxton Road end and, in 1923, a similar stand was added at the Park Lane end. The capacity had now reached 58,000, with about 40,000 under cover. In 1934 the club spent £60,000 to rebuild the East Stand. The new stand was a double-decker structure, with the lower section in two tiers; the upper section had 4,983 seats, while the two lower tiers provided standing room for over 18,700. The middle section, which is the top tier of the lower section, was known to fans as "The Shelf". The Shelf became a place where ardent fans congregated, unlike many other stadiums where the stands behind the goals are the preferred gathering place for the loudest fans. It was also the only raised terracing in the English league. The total stadium capacity was now nearly 80,000. The East Stand was officially opened on 22 September 1934 for a match against Aston Villa.
In the 1930s, football had a popular following, and despite Tottenham's relative lack of success at the time, 75,038 spectators squeezed into White Hart Lane in March 1938 to see Spurs' performance against Sunderland in the FA Cup. The redeveloped stadium was also used for international matches; in 1935 it hosted a game between Nazi Germany and England that England won, 3–0. The venue also hosted some of the football preliminaries for the 1948 Summer Olympics. During the Second World War, Spurs shared the ground with rival Arsenal when Highbury was requisitioned by the government and used as an Air Raid Precautions centre.
Tottenham became firmly established as one of England's biggest clubs that attracted some of the highest attendances in the country on a regular basis. Attendance at White Hart Lane averaged at over 53,000 in 1961, their double winning year. Between the late 1920s and 1972, White Hart Lane was one of very few British football grounds that featured no advertising hoardings at all.
1953 saw the introduction of floodlights, with their first use being a friendly against Racing Club de Paris in September that year. They were upgraded in 1957, and in 1961, floodlight pylons were installed. These were renovated again in the 1970s, and in 1990 the floodlight pylons were replaced with spotlights mounted on the East and West stands.
All-seater stadium The stadium as designed by Archibald Leitch stayed in the same form for a few decades, seating sections however were progressively introduced. In 1962, 2,600 seats were fitted at the back of the South Stand (on Park Lane), followed the next year by 3,500 seats at the North (Paxton Road) Stand, which was further extended in 1968 to link up with the West Stand to give a further 1,400 seats. The South and West stands were linked in 1973, adding further seats, but the capacity of the ground dropped overall as seats replaced standing terraces.
In 1980, in a bid to improve facilities and upgrade what was then considered an outdated stadium, a new phase of redevelopment began that transformed the ground. The new chairman, Arthur Richardson, green-lit the project over the scepticism of previous chairman Sidney Wale. The old West Stand was demolished in November 1980 to be replaced by a new stand designed by Ernest Atherden that had 6,500 seats and featured 72 executive boxes. The new West Stand opened 15 months later on 6 February 1982 for a match against Wolverhampton Wanderers, won by Spurs 6–1, with a hat-trick from Ricky Villa. However, cost overruns in the project, which rose from £3.5 million to £6 million, and the cost of rebuilding the team, resulted in financial difficulties for the club. Irving Scholar took advantage of a rift in the boardroom and bought out the shares of Wale, leading to a change of directors.