St James' Park

For the park in London, see St James's Park. For the football stadium in Exeter, see St James Park.

St James' Park

SJP (St James) Gallowgate
Full name	St James' Park
Location	Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK
Owner	Freemen of Newcastle upon Tyne
Capacity	52,387
Surface	Grass
Construction
Opened	1892
Expanded	1998-2000
Tenants
Newcastle United F.C (1892-present)

St James' Park is an all-seater stadium in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and is the home of Newcastle United Football Club. The stadium has a capacity of 52,387, making it the third largest club ground and fourth largest football stadium in England, and seventh largest club ground in The United Kingdom behind Wembley Stadium, Old Trafford, Millennium Stadium, Celtic Park, Emirates Stadium, and Hampden Park

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 1892 after the unification of Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End, although football had been played there since 1880.

It was announced on 2 April 2007 that the club intend to submit plans for a new £300million development that would increase the stadium's capacity to around 60,000.

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 36,610 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, which would be in the design of the San Siro. The old ground would then be connected and used by Newcastle Falcons Rugby Club to replace their Kingston Park. These plans fell through due to political wranglings, led by a conservation group headed by Dolly Potter. Instead the club decided to expand the current St James' Park by adding extra tiers to the Sir John Hall 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. The upper tiers (especially the upper tier on the Sir John Hall Stand) are home to some of Newcastle's most vocal supporters but the Gallowgate End is home to Newcastle's most vocal and passionate supporters.

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 52,143. The current capacity is 52,387, after some handrails were removed to make way for approximately 200 new seats, back in 2004.

View of the pitch from the directors box.

The cost of the new construction work was estimated at £42 million, significantly higher than the proposed Leazes Park stadium. Although the stadium appears 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 two sides. The scope for further expansion is limited by a road facing the Gallowgate end and the Tyne and Wear Metro runs underneath where the proposed expansion would be.

There is also a multi-storey car park. The car park includes a ramp into a St James' Park bar, which is sometimes used for competition nights where a car could be the prize.

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 player Alan Shearer. During excavation underneath the stand during building work, the builders uncovered the original steps of the old Gallowgate End stand, which had simply been covered up when the stadium was fully renovated in 1993. These steps were removed for Shearer's Bar.

The stadium has hosted several music shows; including The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Queen, Bob Dylan, Bryan Adams and most recently, Rod Stewart.

Design

The Newcastle Brown Ale Stand, or Gallowgate End, can be extended to level 7 height (the same size as Milburn and Sir John Hall stands).

Increasing the Gallowgate would mean extra foundations due to the nearby Metro Station and would cost more, with extra caution because of a nearby road. This could be funded by the FA if England host the 2018 World Cup. Currently proposals are under consideration to increase the Gallowgate End, eventually taking the capacity to 60,000. This expansion would be funded by the city council and linked in with the £300 million redevelopment of the land behind the stand and over the Metro Station. These plans, however were thrown into doubt due to the takeover by billionaire, Mike Ashley.

Increasing the East Stand is currently not possible, as there are listed buildings behind the stand. One option would be to connect the roof that goes over the Sir John Hall, Milburn and Gallowgate stands over the East Stand and fill the empty space between the roof and stand with executive boxes or a mosaic welcoming fans to St James' Park.

Trivia

Chinatown Arch with St. James' Park in the background

• The stadium hosted three matches during Euro 1996. Along with Elland Road it was assigned to 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. The name now is officially St James' Park, although the majority of people still pronounce it in with the additional possessive 's'.

• St James' Park is the only FA Premier League Stadium in the centre of a city outside of London.

• It is one of only two original football stadiums in the north east of England, as Sunderland's Roker Park has been replaced by the Stadium of Light and Middlesbrough's Ayresome Park has been replaced by the Riverside Stadium. Hartlepool United's Victoria Park is the only other having been used since 1908.

• St James' Park was featured in the 2005 movie Goal!, in which the character, Santiago Muñez, plays for Newcastle United.

• It is the only stadium in the FA Premier League to not have a scoreboard of any kind.

• St James' Park was named as one of the 6 stadiums in England to be up to FIFA standard in order to stage a World Cup match. The others were the new Wembley, Old Trafford, the Emirates Stadium, City of Manchester Stadium, and Villa Park.

• St. Jakob-Park (St James in English) in Basel is named in honour of St James' Park.

• The announcer's name at St James' Park is Tom Best, who has been with the club for the last two seasons. A previous announcer was Alan Robson who has presented the local phone-in show "Nightowls" on Metro Radio for over twenty years.

• In 1958 3 supporters attempted to bury a tunnel under St James' Park so that they could play on the pitch at night. 5 days after they started work on the tunnel it collapsed, killing 2 of the men.

Average Attendance

Premier League

• 2005-06: 52,032
• 2006-07: 50,686

External links

• Pictures of St. James' Park (in German)
• St. James' Park Description and Image Gallery

54°58′31.93″N 1°37′17.81″W