Wooden seating and old-fashioned turnstiles are part of Craven Cottage’s charm.
Fulham Football Club plays at Craven Cottage, which is considered a classic ground by many fans – not just home supporters – and is one of the most pleasant destinations for teams in the English Football League. The stadium is located next to Bishop’s Park on the bank of the River Thames.
After Chelsea F.C. at Stamford Bridge, Fulham is the professional football club closest to the centre of London, with an SW6 address denoting a smart location in the football pecking order. Fulham will probably never be able to compete at the level of its glamorous neighbour, but Craven Cottage enjoys a charisma based less on sporting honours than on a reputation for friendliness, and a little architectural eccentricity.
Its fans point out that Craven Cottage was ranked in the top ten stadiums in the world by Sky Sports in 2013. The broadcaster said: ‘There is something wonderfully charming about Craven Cottage . . . its red brick façade welcomes supporters with old-fashioned turnstiles. The Thames flows peacefully behind the opposing stand . . . even football ruffians can’t help but become misty-eyed at their first sight of the Cottage Pavilion.’
The original Craven Cottage was a thatched hunting lodge built in 1780 by the 6th Baron Craven, surrounded by gardens in an area known as the Bishop’s Palace, home of the Bishop of London. Rumours persist among Fulham fans of past tenants of the Cottage. These include the exiled French Emperor Napoleon III, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Florence Nightingale. It has been calculated that the building would have stood in the centre of what is today’s pitch. It was destroyed by fire in 1888 and the site abandoned.
Fulham F.C. is the oldest London club in the Football League. It had started in 1879, when a schoolteacher and churchwarden formed a team for local boys at Fulham St Andrew’s Church in West Kensington. This grew into a well organized club, and after a nomadic existence looking for a permanent home, the club discovered the stretch of disused land around Craven Cottage in 1894. It was so overgrown that it took two years to be made suitable as a playing surface. The first football match at Craven Cottage was played in October 1896, when Fulham beat Minerva 4–0 in the Middlesex Senior Cup. The ground’s first stand was described as looking like an orange box, consisting of four wooden structures each holding 250 seats.
To replace it Fulham F.C. hired Scottish architect Archibald Leitch, who had risen to prominence after designing the Glasgow Ibrox Stadium in 1899. He built the Stevenage Road Grandstand (now called the Johnny Haynes Stand) in his characteristic style, with a red brick north façade and a classic pitch-facing gable in the middle of the stand roof. He also designed a pavilion, the present-day Cottage, which club legend says is a late addition after he had forgotten to include dressing rooms in the original plan. On the side of the Cottage is a balcony from where players’ families and friends spectate.
The balcony on the inside of the Cottage, which is placed at an angle overlooking the corner of the pitch, is traditional viewing area for players’ families.
Craven Cottage was further expanded with the building of terraces in the next decades, and reached its record attendance in 1938, when a total of 49,335 spectators attended a game against Millwall. The reason for this exceptionally large crowd was that the game at Chelsea had suddenly been cancelled, so many people migrated to the Cottage that afternoon. Ten years later, Craven Cottage hosted football matches during the 1948 Olympic Games.
The Riverside Stand was constructed in 1972, and it also incorporates the Fulham Wall, which is the mile marker post in the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race held each spring.
The stand on Stevenage Road celebrated its centenary in the 2005/6 season and, following the death of Fulham F.C.’s favourite son, former England captain Johnny Haynes, in a car accident in October 2005, it was renamed the Johnny Haynes Stand.
Johnny Haynes, George Cohen, Alan Mullery, Bobby Robson, George Best, Bobby Moore and Rodney Marsh are among the club’s most famous players, and it has also had several colourful and enterprising Chairmen, including Tommy Trinder, Jimmy Hill and more recently Mohamed Al-Fayed between 1997 and 2013. Craven Cottage has flirted with Rugby League, and has hosted women’s football and a range of entertainment events not related to football.
Away team changing room, housed in the Cottage.
Fulham was regularly filling its ground on match days in 2014, but struggling again on the pitch and with changes of managers. For some years plans have been complete to increase to capacity from 25,700 to 30,000 through the expansion of the Riverside Stand, with a massive cantilevered second tier and complete new roof. Surviving by the narrowest of margins in the Premiership in 2007 and 2008 caused those plans to be put on hold, to be revived later. After thirteen continuous years in the Premiership, Fulham succumbed to relegation to the Championship for the 2014/15 season. Many hope this unassuming club will bounce back and remain unsullied by naming rights and property deals.