Highfield Road

Hello Mister D-Di I understand your sentiments but I think your remark about "Not really much to show for 106 years of history" is unfair. The artwork was a monstrosity and contained several historical mistakes. It was me who spotted them at the original unveiling ceremony on 16 June 2012. I took it upon myself to get this rectified. Nobody else did and SISU/CCFC offered no help. Taylor Wimpey were extremely unhelpful and basically washed their hands of it. After two years of persistence, and with the fantastic help of Coventry City Council, the plaque and plinth was unveiled on 16 September 2014, exactly 115 years after the first match was played at Highfield Road. The monument has cost thousands of pounds. I personally raised £500 towards the cost. I would love to see something more grandeur there but understand this would cost possibly tens of thousands of pounds. If you have the time to raise the money and provide designs for consideration, I would support you and gladly make a donation. Something more substantial will be very expensive and take a lot of time and commitment to deliver. Are you prepared to do that?

Hi. I am, of course, aware who you are and you know me very well too. My comments on the new monument are in no way intended to disparage it at all, and I was very pleased to see it when I visited the site prior to the Yeovil game. It is very tasteful with its simplicity. 'Not much to show' is really a reference to the fact that the whole site has virtually wiped away all signs of the fact that there was once a football ground with so much history there. For instance, they didn't even have the decency to name any of the roads after significant people in the club's history, a complete contrast to the site of Coundon Road rugby ground. Why am I not surprised that the club have been so unsupportive? They have never had any regard for the history and heritage. I can only applaud your efforts to raise money to replace what was there before. If you look back on this thread you will see that I actually raised the issue of the monument being inappropriate as early as December 2011. As well as mentioning it here, I emailed our mutual friend Jim Brown to see if he had any influence in the matter, although I don't know if he followed up the message. I can only hope that it has been melted down for scrap! Hope you are well, it would be good to have a catch-up over a pint sometime.

"Store yer bike, please sir?" Ah, the good old days - Div III South

We knocked down one of the stands. I think it was the one with the rounded roof on the terraces. My younger brother had a fall and fractured his skull.

The pitch sloped down towards the main stand and after it was levelled the walls around the pitch were at very different heights. That stand, on the Thackhall Street side, was demolished in 1964. The wings of the new Sky Blue Stand were already built the previous summer. Demolition started at the end of the season after City beat Colchester to win Division 3. A few days later we played a Brazilian team (America FC) in a friendly and that stand was half demolished. Just three months later the two wings had been joined by the rest of the stand and it opened for the Plymouth game on 22nd August 1964. It was a Banbury Buildings job, the company of Derrick Robins.

The first floodlights were installed in October 1953, comprising pairs of bulbs on wooden poles. Competitive games were not permitted under floodlights and so a series of friendlies were played. The first was against Queen of the South and attracted almost 17000 to Highfield Road for the spectacle. There were about 24 of the wooden poles but none are visible on the picture so it does clearly pre-date October 1953. The lights were unreliable and the familiar pylons were installed in October 1957 with a new lighting system. They were manufactured by GEC and installed by Lee Beesley at a total cost of £15000. The pylons remained part of the landscape of the city until 1994 when dismantled and sold for scrap. Hamilton Academicals bought the actual lights.

The original floodlights went to Gresty Road, home of Crewe Alexandra

I had the opportunity to visit the site for the first time this week, and as MisterD-Di says, the plaque is "not much to show" for 106 years' history of the Highfield Road ground. Here's the plaque and a photo taken across Signet Square towards what used to be the Sky Blue Stand in Thackhall Street

"Look! The day Highfield Road went up in flames"

The Bantams team all joined the Hales Street fire brigade in 1939, trouble was they gave the hose to Morgan, he passed it on to Charlie Elliott who passed to Billy Frith who passed it to Snapey . . .

Brilliant!!!