Roots Hall

Roots Hall

Full name	Roots Hall Stadium
Location	Southend-on-Sea
Capacity	12,392
Field size	110 x 74 yards
Construction
Built	1952
Opened	1955
Tenants
Southend United F.C.

Roots Hall is the home ground of the League One club Southend United. With a capacity of 12,392 Roots Hall is the largest football stadium in Essex, and is the current venue for the final of the Essex Senior Cup. Plans are in place for a new 22,000 seat stadium at Fossetts Farm, though work has yet to begin on the new development.

The site now occupied by Roots Hall is where Southend United had originally played their home games on their formation in 1906. Upon the outbreak of the First World War the area was designated for storage and Southend were forced out. After the war the club elected to move to a new ground at the Kursaal and Roots Hall first became a quarry for sand then a tipping site.

By the early 1950s Southend had moved to Southend Stadium off Sutton Road. The club did not own the ground and the dog track which encircled the pitch made it unsuitable for use as a football stadium. In 1952 the wasteland at the old Roots Hall site was purchased to build a new stadium for the club. Work on the ground could not begin immediately owing to the large quantities of rubbish which had been dumped on the site in the club's absence, which took nearly a year to clear. On 20 August 1955 Roots Hall hosted its first match, against Norwich City. The ground was declared open by the Secretary of the Football Association, Sir Stanley Rous. The ground remained the youngest in the Football League until the opening of Scunthorpe United's Glanford Park in 1988.

Roots Hall's construction had not been completed when the ground was opened, with some stands only running for a short distance along the touchline and others waiting to be concreted over. In addition to these problems, the pitch's drainage was unsuitable and by the end of the 1955–56 season it had to be completely relaid.

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