Did you know that the world’s oldest international stadium is in Scotland? Hampden Park was built in Southside Glasgow back in 1873, and was home to the local team Queen’s Park until a railway line was built right through the middle of it in the 1890s. The current Hampden Park (home to the Scottish national team) was then built as a replacement in the early 20th century.
These days a bowling club sits on the site of the original stadium, marked by a mural commemorating one of the greatest moments in Scottish football history: beating England 5-1 all the way back in 1882.
However, the Hampden Bowling Club has been struggling recently. If the club is forced to close, the land would be fair game for commercial developers who might not care about its historical significance. Scottish football fans are now calling for the spot to be ‘protected and celebrated’ as a site of cultural significance.
Lindsay Hamilton, who does walking tours around the area for football fans and history enthusiasts alike, told the BBC that the original Hampden Park was ‘the blueprint’ for modern stadiums; ‘Queen's Park built grandstands, toilets, turnstiles for it and it was the first purpose built international football stadium in the world… How we experience football today was all built at first on that site’.
But the bowling club is down to fewer than 50 members, and the committee has already decided that it will be dissolved in February of next year. If no one steps up to run the club and its land, it will be returned to the city, who may sell it to developers. The club hopes that the local community will instead agree to manage the green and use it for local events.
Although you can’t see any of the stadium now, an archeological dig in 2021 did find some original remains. For Hamilton, that’s enough to make it special. She explained that most ‘early football landmarks’ have become car parks or supermarkets, but that Hampden Park remains ‘tangible’, saying ‘here you can still step on it’. Losing that, she believes, would be a blow to Glasgow’s sporting heritage.
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