Lost Grounds of North and West London

That ground is just a five minute walk from where I live. With the stands gone there is now room for two full sized grass pitches side by side and a modern dressing room and indoor training facility behind one end.

It is owned and run by LB Islington for schools' sport and a grass athletics and cricket facility is laid out during the summer term.

I think I am right in saying it is the only natural grass facility left on which official schools matches are played on in the borough and that bit is used for Islington Schools ESFA representative games, but I may be wrong on that.

Just a couple of minutes walk away there is the excellent Whittington Park ground - fully floodlit and with 3G pitch and about two miles to the South the famous Market Road complex home to two end to end fully floodlit and 3G pitches plus the Islington Indoor Tennis Centre....................the football pitches at the latter two venues have replaced the old red shale surfaces with 3G and are really excellent!

Barton, I saw Roy Davies play in that side one cold midweek evening near the end of the season at Wealdstone, I reckon in about 81/82, before the ground was sold for the supermarket that now stands on the site.

They played Enfield in a significant game which, I think ended honours even. I seem to remember that Jimmy Greaves was still trying to play at the time - was it for Hendon or Enfield (Merse?).
The Wealdstone & Enfield sides provided much of the England semi-pro team that year.

That Southall ground was where both Cyril Regis and Sir Les Ferdinand strutted their stuff before making it onto TV. It was just along the road from one of my absolute favourite curry houses - the aptly-named Brilliant, which serves the best Butter Chicken you'll ever taste.
If any of you want to try (I'm not on commission) see what Gordon R thinks of it here:
www.brilliantrestaurant.com/

Enjoy!

Good to see plenty of interest in the London grounds. Just checked to see Stuart Pearce left Wealdstone for Coventry in October 1983; Vinny Jones for Wimbledon in November 1986. Then, a few years later, Paul Furlong went from Enfield to Coventry. The player I remember from my long-ago trip to Lower Mead was George Duck, their record goal scorer.

Given Enfield and Wealdstone each won the Alliance Premier League (Conference) and FA Trophy in the 1980s, there must have been some big matches between the clubs - the league in 82/83 especially; FA Cup 83/84 (went to a second replay); FA Trophy semi-final in 84/85. After leaving Lower Mead, Wealdstone lost a packet on an expensive groundshare at Watford and ended up playing in the old Isthmian League Division 3 at Edgware.

Cyrille Regis....Sir Les.....and Jason Roberts from Hayes (now Hayes and Yeading which shouldn't be confused with AFC Hayes). And I once saw saw Andy Impey play for Yeading in a mudbath at Paulton when it was nigh on impossible to distinguish between the two teams.

As for Robin Friday (ex-Hayes)....

My excuse for this unhealthy interest is my mother came from Ealing and we had a relative who lived next door to the Old Actonians. In another life I I may have been happy at Griffin Park or Loftus Road (but not both of course).

I'm afraid my 49p bargain "Alliance to the Conference: the first 25 years" doesn't go into that sort of detail. However Stuart Pearce did play 35 league games that season so it's a fair chance you saw him. Roy Davies also played practically every game that year but Vinny Jones didn't appear until 84/85 and only ever started...it says here....19 league games (plus another 19 as sub). The club won the Southern League in 1982 under Allen Batsford; the APL/FA Trophy double under Brian Hall.

Wealdstone were in the APL/Conference between 1979-81 and 1982-88; Enfield 1981-90; Barnet 1979-91 and 2001-05. This means the three clubs were together 1982-88. Apparently Wealdstone's biggest Conference crowd was 1556 against Barnet in 1988.

There was more for the FA Cup in 83/84:

1 Enfield Home D 1-1 (1657)
1R Enfield Away D 2-2 (1286)
1R2 Enfield Home W 2-0 (1609)

And for the FA Trophy semi-final in 84/85 :

S/F1L Enfield Away W 2-0 (1655)
S/F2L Enfield Home L 0-1 (2009)

Found this information at www.wfcsc.co.uk. Other stuff at: www.geocities.com/~stones-gallery/centenary/histind.htm and homepage.ntlworld.com/jbtaffel/index.htm

I'm really loving these threads on old-skool grounds of yesteryear - keep 'em coming!

I made it to Plough Lane, it was in the autumn after they won the FA Cup, so I guess that is 1988? Plough-Lane obviously had some of the same sort of stands as some of the ones in the above photos. It still seems incredible to think that this stadium hosted top-flight football less than 20 years ago - it goes to show how much football has changed (and I don't mean that necessarily in a positive way!). It had real character - a hotch-potch of ramshackled stands - can't remember the attendance, but I bet it wasn't much more than 5/6k.
I don't think that I've been to see a top-flight UK league game since then - it simply doesn't appeal to me anymore.

Sadly, trying to find images with crowds at Plough Lane is virtually impossible - however, it came up with fantastic lot of images of a modern non-descripts property development...........

A footnote to this - outside the ground was parked a small white van with "Vincent Jones - Building Services" painted on the side!! surely he wasn't still doing work on the side then?!

It was indeed because of a "personal link"..............

My colleague Alex Jackson had a long time business relationship and friendship with a gentleman called Harry (for the life of me I can't recall his surname) who was a travel agent and director of Wealdstone FC. Harry had provided very generous terms for flying and accommodating the squad and accompanying party that had taken part in the Zeeburgia Youth Tournament in Amsterdam in those days (we went over two years running I believe I'm, right in recalling) and this was part of the "deal" that Harry had negotiated on behalf of Wealdstone FC...................the sort of arrangement one often sees as part of transfer dealings.

I think Portsmouth were also cut in on the same deal as Alex used to maintain strong friendship with Ray Crawford who was their Youth Team Manager, and they sent a side to play at Wealdstone too.

Quite why the game was played as the second of two successive days of friendlies I don't recall, but no doubt due to being the only one available for all concerned I guess.

Whilst I wasn't at the Lower Mead game with the Gulls, I did see a game there around 1985-86 and I'm pretty sure they were playing Lincoln City in the Conference. Stones had been a force to be reckoned with around those years when they turned professional in the early seventies after having been one of the iconic "amateur" giants in their history. I believe they had not long won the southern League Div 1 Championship the year before we played there and then went on to lift the Southern League Premiership title not long afterwards, apply for Football League membership and indeed become probably the strongest non league set up in the country for a while.

Their gates were numbering a couple of thousand or more and they duly took their pace in the newly formed Alliance Premier League..................although the ground was rather ancient a somewhat "theatre of wood" it WAS located on prime land in the centre of Harrow Weald and this proved to be their undoing as their chairman of the time (I believe he was called Alan Martin) convened a sale to Tescos without securing a secure new home for the club and as it turned out on terms that were rather more favourable to him than the football club. Thus has followed a couple of decades of being "in the wilderness" and they now play at Ruislip Manor FC - a club in which they bought a controlling interest in order to at last have a ground of their own once more. They also own a share of a new development in Canons Park (King Edwards Playing Fields I think)where they are in the process of jointly building a shared facility with Barnet FC which will be used by Wealdstone as their main home and the "Tin Pots" for their training base and Ladies FC set up.

I also recall spending a rather boozy afternoon at Clapton FC when they were the visitors in the company of our former striker Simon Garner who was with the Wealdstone party and having been left out of the team and the game being rather crap entertainment value we decided to otherwise occupy ourselves!

Wealdstone................a club of history that "needs" to come back somewhat!