Fratton Park

Fratton Park

The Old Girl
Address	Frogmore Road, Portsmouth, PO4 8RA
Coordinates	50°47′47″N 1°3′50″W / 50.79639°N 1.06389°W / 50.79639; -1.06389
Public transit	Fratton
Owner	Portsmouth F.C.
Capacity	20,899
Record attendance	All-time: 51,385 vs. Derby County (26 February 1949)[2] All-seater: 20,821 vs. Tottenham Hotspur (17 October 2009)
Field size	100 × 66 m (109 × 72 yards)
Surface	Natural grass with artificial fibres[1]
Scoreboard	Digital
Construction
Built	1899
Opened	15 August 1899; 125 years ago (1899-08-15) (first match: 6 September 1899)
Renovated	1900, 1905, 1915, 1925, 1928, 1935, 1949, 1956, 1962, 1974, 1985, 1988, 1996, 1997, 2007, 2015, 2020-present
Architect	Alfred H. Bone (1898-99, 1905), Arthur Cogswell (1900), Archibald Leitch (1925, 1935), KSS Design Group (1997)
Tenants
Portsmouth (1899–present)
Website
https://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/

Fratton Park is a football ground in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and is the home of Portsmouth Football Club. Fratton Park's location on Portsea Island is unique in English professional football, as it is the only professional English football ground not located on the mainland of Great Britain.^[3] Fratton Park has been the only home football ground in Portsmouth F.C.'s entire history.

Fratton Park was built in 1899 by Alfred H. Bone, a Portsmouth-based architect, surveyor and a founding director of the football club. The site of Fratton Park was formerly a market garden potato field in a Portsea Island farming village named Milton. By 1904, the village of Milton and the rest of Portsea Island had become part of the borough of Portsmouth.

Portsmouth's football ground was deceptively named as "Fratton Park" by the club's founding directors, to persuade supporters that the new Milton-based football ground was within walking distance of neighbouring Fratton's convenient railway station; the true distance between the railway station and football ground is actually one mile, or a ten-minute walk.

Fratton Park was first opened to the public on Tuesday 15 August 1899. The first ever match at Fratton Park took place on the afternoon of Wednesday 6 September 1899,^[4] a 2–0 friendly win against Southampton, attended by 4,141 supporters.^[4] Three days later, the first competitive home match at Fratton Park was played on Saturday 9 September 1899, a Southern League First Division 2–0 win against Reading, attended by 9,000 supporters.

Sir John Brickwood (1852–1932) was Portsmouth's founding chairman. Brickwood, owner of a Portsmouth-based brewery, was also a philanthropist. In 1900, the Brickwood Brewery opened a mock-Tudor public house named The Pompey (designed by Arthur Cogswell) next to Fratton Park. In 1905, a mock-Tudor club pavilion was donated by Sir John Brickwood and built to the north of The Pompey pub. The pavilion, designed by Alfred H. Bone, originally had an octagonal clock tower spire on its roof. The pavilion was used as club offices and the players changing rooms.

Fratton Park's capacity was expanded to 58,000 supporters in 1935 after the North Stand and North Terrace were rebuilt,^[5] but was reduced to 52,000 to follow new safety laws introduced after the Burnden Park disaster of 1946.^[6] The highest recorded attendance in Fratton Park's history was in Portsmouth's first First Division championship winning season of 1948–49 with a crowd recorded at 51,385 on 26 February 1949, for an FA Cup sixth-round match vs Derby County, a match which if Portsmouth had won, could have led to them achieving the rare Double of winning both the FA Cup and First Division titles in the same season.^[2]

On 26 July 1948, Fratton Park hosted a Netherlands vs Ireland first-round football game in the 1948 London Olympics, one of only two grounds outside London to host matches in the Olympic football tournament. The game at Fratton Park was attended by a crowd of 8,000, with a 3–1 win to the Netherlands.

On 22 February 1956, Fratton Park became the first English football ground to stage an evening Football League match under artificial light, against Newcastle United.^[7] The original 1956 floodlights, positioned at opposite ends on top of Fratton Park's South Stand and North Stand roofs, were replaced in 1962 by floodlight tower pylons in the four corners of the ground.

Fratton Park's four corner floodlight towers, erected in 1962, became well known in Portsmouth and also acted as a useful landmark for visiting away supporters. Since 2015, the four towers were gradually replaced by modern roof-level lights. One surviving floodlight tower, from the north-west corner, was renovated and relocated to Fratton Park's main car park on 15 July 2019 for preservation, albeit without its lighting lamps, which were not required and removed.^[8] The preserved floodlight tower now also acts as a telecommunications antenna tower.

Fratton Park was used as part of the 70-day long London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay route. The Day 59 relay route began on 16 July 2012, with Portsmouth F.C. steward and D-Day veteran John Jenkins as runner number 001, carrying the Olympic flame onto Fratton Park pitch. The Day 59 torch relay route then set off from Fratton Park, through Portsmouth and eastwards to Brighton & Hove.^[9][10]

Fratton Park is affectionately nicknamed "The Old Girl" by Portsmouth supporters,^[11][12] and has a reputation for high attendances and a powerful atmosphere, similar to that of larger capacity stadia.^[13] Fratton Park's maximum capacity has been reduced to 20,899 since it became an all-seater. Several relocations plans proposed during the 1990s and 2000s failed to materialise.