Hartsdown Park
Hartsdown Park
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| Full name | Hartsdown Park |
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| Location | Margate, Kent, England |
| Coordinates | 51°22′47″N 1°22′27″E / 51.37972°N 1.37417°ECoordinates: 51°22′47″N 1°22′27″E / 51.37972°N 1.37417°E |
| Owner | Thanet District Council |
| Operator | Margate F.C. |
| Capacity | 3,000 (400 seats) |
| Surface | Grass |
| Construction | |
| Built | 1929 |
| Opened | 1929 |
| Tenants | |
| Margate F.C. (1929–2002, 2005–present) Thanet Vikings (1986) |
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Hartsdown Park is a football stadium located in Margate, Kent, England. It has been the home of Margate F.C. (known as Thanet United F.C. between 1981 and 1989) since 1929, apart from between 2002 and 2005, when the club was forced to share the grounds of other Kent clubs while protracted redevelopment work occurred.
Although the football club was able to return to the stadium in 2005, redevelopment work is still at a very early stage, and many of the ground's facilities are still of a temporary nature. Nonetheless, the club has extensive plans for the future development of the site.
The stadium has been the home of Margate F.C. since 1929, the same year the park itself opened to the public. The local council had purchased the former grounds of Hartsdown House for public use and built a stadium which it was agreed the football club would lease, initially at a charge of £200 per year. Initially the players had to change in Hartsdown House itself, approximately 200 yards from the pitch. A small wooden grandstand with 500 bench seats was soon added, followed shortly afterwards by new dressing rooms and a second stand on the north side of the ground containing a mixture of standing and seated accommodation. The first ever match at the new stadium was a friendly against Folkestone on 31 August 1929 and the first competitive match a Kent League fixture against Dover two weeks later. In 1934 the club entered into an agreement to become a nursery team for Arsenal, and as part of the agreement the Hartsdown pitch was altered to exactly match the size of that at Highbury.
Further covered spectator accommodation was erected at the ground in 1935, but this blew down in a storm in 1952 and had to be rebuilt. At around the same time the club added a new terrace next to the main stand, where supporters had previously stood on banked earth. A new covered terrace was installed at the Tivoli Park Avenue end of the ground in the late 1950s, officially named the Cornhill Stand but more usually known to fans as the Coffin End, the name deriving from a prominent piece of graffiti which adorned its rear wall for many years. The club's first set of floodlights was erected in September 1959 and inaugurated with a friendly match against West Ham United.
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