Coventry Road | |
Location | Small Heath, Birmingham, England |
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Coordinates | 52°28′13″N 1°51′18″W / 52.47028°N 1.85500°W |
Owner | Gessey family |
Capacity | ~30,000 |
Surface | Grass |
Construction | |
Opened | 11 September 1877 |
Closed | 22 December 1906 |
Demolished | 1907 |
Tenants | |
Small Heath F.C. (1877–1906) Small Heath A.C. (1891–1906) |
Muntz Street is the popular name of a former association football stadium situated in the Small Heath district of Birmingham, England, taken from the street on which it stood. During its lifetime the ground was known as Coventry Road; the name "Muntz Street" is a more recent adoption. It was the ground at which the teams of Birmingham City F.C. – under the club's former names of Small Heath Alliance, Small Heath and Birmingham – played their home games for nearly 30 years. It also served as the headquarters of the Small Heath Athletic Club.
The Muntz Street ground, then situated on Birmingham's eastern edge and bordered on two sides by farmland, opened in 1877. It was a field with terracing round it which provided standing accommodation for roughly 10,000 spectators. A wooden stand was built and the terracing raised to expand the capacity to around 30,000, but eventually it proved too small for the football club's needs. They built a new stadium nearer the city centre, St Andrew's, which hosted its first game in December 1906. Muntz Street, by then in a heavily built-up area, was demolished in 1907 and the land used for housing. The street of the same name remains.