Bank Street (football ground)
| Bank Lane | |
An HM Land Registry map of Bank Street and the surrounding area (c. 1909)
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| Full name | Bradford and Clayton athletic ground |
|---|---|
| Location | Clayton, Manchester |
| Coordinates | 53°29′07″N 2°11′22″W / 53.48528°N 2.18944°W |
| Owner | Bradford and Clayton Athletic Company (–1898) Mr W. Crompton (1898–1910) |
| Capacity | ~50,000 |
| Surface | Grass |
| Construction | |
| Demolished | 1910 |
| Tenants | |
| Manchester United F.C. (1893–1910; known as Newton Heath F.C. 1893–1902) | |
Bank Street, known for a time as Bank Lane, was a multi-purpose stadium in Clayton, Manchester, England. It was mostly used for football matches and was the second home ground of Manchester United Football Club (then known as Newton Heath Football Club), after North Road, which they left in 1893. The stadium had a capacity of around 50,000, but the club moved to Old Trafford in 1910 because club owner John Henry Davies believed he could not sufficiently expand the ground.
The stadium was in poor repair towards the end of its life and, shortly after the club moved out to Old Trafford, the main stand at Bank Street blew down in a storm. The site is now occupied by the car park of the Manchester Velodrome, with a plaque on a house wall on Bank Street indicating the presence of the former ground. The site is close to the City of Manchester Stadium, the home of Manchester City Football Club.
Also known as Bank Lane, the ground was located on Bank Street in the Manchester suburb of Clayton, opposite the junction with Ravensbury Street and between the railway line and the Albion Chemical works. Known locally as the Bradford and Clayton athletic ground, it was owned by the Bradford and Clayton Athletic Company. After Newton Heath F.C. (who became Manchester United in 1902) were evicted from their old ground at North Road by the Manchester Deans and Canons, who believed it to be inappropriate for the club to charge an entry fee to the ground, secretary A. H. Albut procured the use of the Bank Street ground in June 1893. The site was let to the club for eight months of the year, with pre-season training permitted on occasional nights in the summer. The ground was without stands, but, by the start of the 1893–94 season, two stands had been built; one spanning the full length of the pitch on one side and the other behind the goal at the "Bradford end". At the opposite end, the "Clayton end", the ground had been "built up, thousands thus being provided for".
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