The City Ground is a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly ...

stadium in West Bridgford,

Nottinghamshire Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The trad ...

, England, on the banks of the

River Trent The Trent is the third-longest river in the United Kingdom. Its source is in Staffordshire, on the southern edge of Biddulph Moor. It flows through and drains the North Midlands. The river is known for dramatic flooding after storms and ...

. It has been home to

Nottingham Forest Football Club Nottingham Forest Football Club is an association football club based in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England. Nottingham Forest was founded in 1865 and have been playing their home games at the City Ground, on the banks of the River Tr ...

since 1898 and has a capacity of 30,445. The stadium was a venue when England hosted

Euro 96 The 1996 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 96, was the 10th UEFA European Championship, a quadrennial football tournament contested by European nations and organised by UEFA. It took place in England from 8 to 30 ...

, and is only away from Meadow Lane, home of Forest's neighbouring club Notts County; the two grounds are the closest professional football stadiums in England and the second-closest in the United Kingdom, after the grounds of

Dundee Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was , giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or ...

and Dundee United. They are located on opposite sides of the

History

Background

Nottingham Forest are the oldest league football club in the world, and were founded in 1865, but did not move to the City Ground, their seventh home, until 33 years later in 1898. For their first fourteen years the club played most of their matches at the Forest Recreation Ground, from which they took their name. This was

common land Common land is land owned by a person or collectively by a number of persons, over which other persons have certain common rights, such as to allow their livestock to graze upon it, to collect wood, or to cut turf for fuel. A person who has ...

so the club were unable to exploit their matches commercially, and as there was no gate money, revenue came mainly from the players' membership fees. When Forest first entered the

FA Cup The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football compet ...

in 1878–79, reaching the semi-finals, they were unable to play home fixtures, as the cup competition rules stipulated that spectators should be charged admission. In 1879 the club left The Forest to play at the

Castle Ground The Castle Ground was a cricket and football sports ground in The Meadows area of Nottingham, England. The ground was used by Nottingham Forest between 1879 and 1881, and by Notts County between 1880 and 1894. History The Castle Ground was ...

in The Meadows, after the Notts Castle Football Club which had previously played there disbanded and its players joined Forest. This allowed Forest to charge admission in time for its second FA Cup campaign in 1879–80. Rapidly-growing interest in the game saw the ability to accommodate large numbers of spectators at football matches increase in importance, and from 1880 most of the club's important games were played at

Trent Bridge Cricket Ground Trent Bridge Cricket Ground is a cricket ground mostly used for Test, One-Day International and county cricket located in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England, just across the River Trent from the city of Nottingham. Trent Bridge is al ...

, then Nottingham's most advanced enclosed sports venue. In 1883, however, Forest were abruptly replaced as tenants at Trent Bridge by local rivals Notts County, a move possibly connected with Notts' appointment of the secretary of

Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Nottinghamshire. The club's limited overs team is called the ...

to their own newly-created post of paid Club Secretary. Forest only discovered they were being replaced at Trent Bridge in early August 1883, leaving them very little time to find a new ground, and the Parkside Ground in Lenton, where Forest first played on 22 September, was criticised for its distance from the town, its slope and its uneven surface, with one newspaper columnist commenting that "so long as the Forest Club will maintain a ground on which it is impossible for them to play their particular game accurately, in addition to being bleak and generally inaccessible, they will meet with little patronage". Despite moving three years later to the nearby Gregory Ground, which was much better reviewed in the press, Lenton's distance from the centre of Nottingham saw attendances continue to decline and in 1890 the club moved again, this time to the Town Ground in The Meadows, which was much closer to the club's roots and became Forest's first proper football stadium. In July 1897 the Town Ground was briefly renamed the City Ground, in recognition of Nottingham being granted city status, but the newly-formed city council planned to redevelop the site for building and terminated Forest's lease, offering instead the site on the south side of the river that would become today's City Ground. This land had been granted to the Mayor and Burgesses of Nottingham by

Edward VI Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553) was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1553. He was crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour and the first E ...

in a royal charter dated 21 February 1551, with the intention that rentals from the agricultural land would pay for the upkeep of the adjacent

Trent Bridge Trent Bridge Cricket Ground is a cricket ground mostly used for Test, One-Day International and county cricket located in West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire, England, just across the River Trent from the city of Nottingham. Trent Bridge is also ...

. The City Council granted the club a 21-year lease on the new site, and the club approved the scheme to move to the new ground at their annual meeting in December 1897. To raise the £3,000 required to finance the move the club asked members, supporters and businessmen to subscribe to "New Ground Scheme" bonds which cost £5 each, raising over £2,000. Many of the bonds were never redeemed, the bondholders effectively making a donation to fund the new ground.

Early years

Forest first played at the new City Ground a week before their FA Cup Final victory in April 1898, and the reserve team played there on the afternoon of the final itself, but the ground was not officially opened until the first match of the following season, a

Division One The Football League First Division was a division of the Football League in England from 1888 until 2004. It was the top division in the English football league system from the season 1888–89 until 1991–92, a century in which the First Div ...

game against

Blackburn Rovers Blackburn Rovers Football Club is a professional football club, based in Blackburn, Lancashire, England, which competes in the , the second tier of the English football league system. They have played home matches at Ewood Park since 1890. Th ...

on 3 September 1898 with an attendance of 15,000. The ground had a wooden-slatted main stand on the west side with a barrel roof, a narrow wooden shelter covering the full width of the Trent End, and a shorter roof covering part of the east side. The pitch was considered to be among the finest in the country, "a velvet carpet of lush turf". This was the result of the work of club committee-member William Bardill, a nurseryman and landscape gardener whose family firm still exists in Stapleford. Bardill excavated the playing area to a depth of two feet, lay a bed of

clinker Clinker may refer to: *Clinker (boat building), construction method for wooden boats *Clinker (waste), waste from industrial processes *Clinker (cement), a kilned then quenched cement product * ''Clinkers'' (album), a 1978 album by saxophonist St ...

to ensure perfect drainage, and on top lay a pitch of high-quality turf brought by barge up the river from Radcliffe-on-Trent. Forest's first round FA Cup match against

Wolverhampton Wanderers Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club (), commonly known as Wolves, is a professional football club based in Wolverhampton, England, which compete in the . The club has played at Molineux Stadium since moving from Dudley Road in 1889. The club' ...

in 1898 attracted a crowd of 32,070, the first time a football match in Nottingham had attracted gate receipts of over £1,000. The ground was considered to be "one of the best in the country" and was chosen to host the

FA Cup Semi final The FA Cup semi-finals are played to determine which teams will contest the FA Cup Final. They are the penultimate phase of the FA Cup, the oldest football tournament in the world. Location The semi-finals have always been contested at neu ...

in 1899, recognition that was proclaimed at the club's annual meeting to be "beneficial to the club and the city". The ground held a total of four FA Cup semi-finals between 1899 and 1905, and a full international match between

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

and

Wales Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...

in 1909. Throughout the 1900s, Notts County also regularly used the City Ground for home matches when their usual venue at Trent Bridge was unavailable for football due to cricket taking precedence. The City Ground, circa 1921 - geograph

The new ground was called the City Ground. It was only a few hundred yards from the old Town Ground at the opposite end of

, which had been named after the Town Arms pub. Nottingham was granted its

Charter A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the re ...

as a city in 1897 and it was called the City Ground to commemorate this as the land on which it stands was at that time within the city boundary. In 1952 boundary changes resulted in the ground coming under the local council of West Bridgford (

Rushcliffe Borough Council Rushcliffe is a local government district with borough status in Nottinghamshire, England. The population of the Local Authority at the 2011 Census was 111,129. Its councilRushcliffe Borough CouncilMeadow Lane, home of Notts County. The City Ground was the first football ground to have elliptically shaped goalposts when it was presented with a new set of goals by the Nottingham-based Standard Goals Company in 1922. Before this, goalposts had usually been round or square. This shape eventually became commonplace, but the FA's ruling in 1938 that the 8-yard width of a goal should be measured from the inside of such posts meant that the City Ground's goals had been two inches too narrow for the preceding sixteen years. In 1935 the club declined an opportunity to buy the ground from Nottingham Corporation for £7,000. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

the City Ground held a variety of events to entertain off-duty servicemen, including

boxing Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermined ...

, horse gymkhanas, and visits from

zoo A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes. The term ''zoological garden'' refers to z ...

s. The pitch was badly damaged by bombing on the night of 8–9 May 1941, with repairs costing £75 9s 11d.

Post war

The City Ground was flooded after the adjacent

burst its banks in March 1947, with Forest having to play some home fixtures at Meadow Lane. Many archives and official records were damaged and floodwaters reached as high as the crossbars of the goals, with swans seen swimming the full length of the pitch. Main_Stand_Fire_1968_Front

After winning promotion in 1950 Forest drew up plans for redeveloping the City Ground, and detailed plans were drawn up by local architects Reginald Cooper and Partners in 1951. The first step was the extension and covering of the Trent End in 1954, though a planned second tier of seats at this end was never built. On 12 October 1957, a new East Stand opened, costing £40,000 and having benches to seat up to 2,500 fans to the rear of the terrace. Together with improvements to the Colwick Road Terrace this gave the ground an increased capacity of 48,000, with 6,500 seats for the club's first season in the First Division since 1925. The visitors for the opening were

Manchester United Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

's " Busby Babes", just four months before eight of them died in the Munich air disaster, and the match on 12 October 1957 saw a new record attendance of 47,804. Although Forest had pioneered floodlit football matches, holding a game illuminated by

Wells light A Wells light was a large paraffin-fuelled (kerosene) blowlamp used for engineering work, particularly for illumination, in Victorian times. At a time before widespread electrical lighting, they were the most common form of high-powered portable il ...

s at the Gregory Ground in March 1889, the City Ground was the second from last top division ground to install permanent floodlights. The floodlights at the ground were first used on 11 September 1961 as Forest faced Gillingham in the League Cup. Four 120 ft pylons were built, one in each corner of the ground, with each pylon holding a bank of thirty-six 1,500 watt lights. The ground's all-time record attendance of 49,946 was set in October 1967 when Forest beat Manchester United 3–1 in a First Division fixture, five months after Forest had finished second to United in the league. In December 1967 the City Ground was host to an England U23 match against

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

The Main Stand was re-roofed, extended and refurbished between 1962 and 1965, with new offices, changing rooms, kit stores, medical suites and press rooms to the rear. On 24 August 1968, however, fire broke out in the stand during a First Division game against

Leeds United Leeds United Football Club is a professional football club based in Leeds, West Yorkshire in England. The club competes in the Premier League, the highest level of England's football league system, and plays its home matches at Elland Road ...

. It started near the dressing rooms and spread rapidly through the largely wooden structure. The stand was damaged but, despite a crowd numbering 31,126, none of them was injured. The only reported injuries were to a television crew on the gantry, who had to scramble down it because the access ladder was stored in the boiler room. The gantry was extended the length of the stand and now has access at both ends. Many of the club's records, trophies and other memorabilia were also lost in the fire. The stand's roof was undamaged, however, allowing the club to rebuild the base of the stand underneath it in concrete and steel. As a result of the fire, Forest played six "home" matches at Meadow Lane, losing all of them, and after returning to the City Ground used the changing rooms of nearby Trent Bridge while the Main Stand was rebuilt. The Executive Stand was opened in August 1980 and was built at a cost of £2.5 million — largely from proceeds of the highly successful era in which Forest won consecutive League Cups, the League title and consecutive

European Cup The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...

s. Under Clough's reign, Forest had taken the English domestic game and the European scene by storm and money raised from those successes was invested in a stand that had a capacity of 10,000. It was renamed The Brian Clough Stand after his retirement and was re-opened after refurbishment by Clough himself in the mid-1990s. The stand also incorporated 36 executive boxes and a large dining area, which was designed to be the focus of the club's corporate hospitality arrangements. The stand had the word "FOREST" spelt out in white seats against the red seats of the upper tier, the first stand in football known to have used this form of coloured seat identification. The opening of the new stand gave the City Ground a capacity of 35,567, including 15,009 seats, a figure that would remain broadly constant until terrace capacities began to be cut after the

Hillsborough disaster The Hillsborough disaster was a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989. It occurred during an FA Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest in ...

in 1989.

Taylor Report

The two closest football grounds in England (50285299147)

Nottingham Forest had been the opposing team in the fateful

semi-final against

Liverpool Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...

at Hillsborough,

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire ...

, on 15 April 1989, in which 97 Liverpool fans were fatally injured in a human crush on the stadium's Leppings Lane terrace. The disaster resulted in the Taylor Report, which ordered that all clubs in the top two divisions of English football should have an all-seater stadium by August 1994. This resulted in the need for more redevelopment and refurbishment at the City Ground. In 1991

Nottingham City Council Nottingham City Council is the local authority for the unitary authority of Nottingham in Nottinghamshire, England. It consists of 55 councillors, representing a total of 20 wards, elected every four years. The council is led by David Mellen, of ...

proposed to build a 45,000 capacity stadium at a cost of £44m on the site of Wilford Power Station, one mile to the west of the City Ground, to be shared by Forest and Notts County. Although Notts County were keen on the idea, the plan was abandoned after Brian Clough declared "over my dead body" and threatened to resign if the plan was approved. Forest's own plans were to redevelop the two ends of the City Ground into all-seater stands, starting with the Trent End, but this was held up by a dispute with the City Council over the 8m-15m strip at the back of the Trent End that they would need to build over to extend the stand. The club had signed a 50-year lease from the City Council for the eleven acres of the City Ground in 1964 at a rent of £750 a year, but the Council demanded a rent of £150,000 a year for the 1,121 square yard "ransom strip" behind the Trent End, leading to accusations that the council were trying to force the club to cooperate with their plans for a new stadium at Wilford. Although a compromise rent of £22,000 per year was agreed, the delay meant that Forest had in the meantime turned their attention to replacing the Colwick Road Terrace at the other end of the ground. The first major development took place in 1992–93 with the rebuilding of the Bridgford Stand at a cost of £4.6m, of which £1.9m came from a grant from the Football Trust. Work started in April 1992 and when completed the stand had a capacity of 7,710, the lower tier of 5,131 being allocated to away supporters. The unusual shape of the roof was a planning requirement to allow sunlight to reach houses in nearby Colwick Road. The Stand includes accommodation for seventy wheelchair supporters. It also houses a management suite, which includes the public address systems, computerised electronic scoreboard controls and the police matchday operation. The Trent End was the most recent stand to be rebuilt between 1994 and 1996 — in time for

, the European Football Championships. The new stand, such a prominent landmark by the

, held 7,338 to take the ground's capacity to 30,576 all-seated. The last day of standing on the Trent End was 8 May 1994, when 27,010 spectators saw Forest celebrate promotion back to the

Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Fo ...

. The ground would be able to expand to up to 46,000 if Forest returned to the Premier League. Forest were relegated from the Premier League three times between 1993 and 1999. Although they achieved promotion at the first attempt following the first two relegations, it was to be 23 years following their relegation in 1999 before they would return to the Premier League in 2022, and they even spent three seasons in League One, the third tier of English football. The City Ground also hosted the

FA Women's Cup The Women's FA Challenge Cup Competition is the top annual cup tournament for women's clubs in English football. Founded in 1970, it has been named the WFA Cup, FA Women's Cup and now Women's FA Cup (Vitality Women's FA Cup for sponsorship reas ...

Final for two successive years in 2007 and 2008. The 2007 final was contested by

Arsenal An arsenal is a place where arms and ammunition are made, maintained and repaired, stored, or issued, in any combination, whether privately or publicly owned. Arsenal and armoury (British English) or armory (American English) are mostl ...

and

Charlton Athletic Charlton Athletic Football Club is an English professional football club based in Charlton, south-east London, which compete in . Their home ground is The Valley, where the club have played since 1919. They have also played at The Mount in ...

, with the attendance of 24,529 smashing the previous record attendance for the competition of 13,824 for the final between Arsenal and

Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea. The area faces Wandswor ...

Selhurst Park Selhurst Park is a football stadium in Selhurst in the London Borough of Croydon which is the home ground of Premier League side Crystal Palace. The stadium was designed by Archibald Leitch and opened in 1924. It has hosted international fo ...

in 2001. In 2008, the attendance record was broken once again when 24,582 spectators saw Arsenal beat Leeds United 4–1. Aside from football, the stadium has also hosted two other large-scale events. On 28 April 2002 the stadium hosted a semi-final of

rugby Rugby may refer to: Sport * Rugby football in many forms: ** Rugby league: 13 players per side *** Masters Rugby League *** Mod league *** Rugby league nines *** Rugby league sevens *** Touch (sport) *** Wheelchair rugby league ** Rugby union: 1 ...

Heineken Cup The European Rugby Champions Cup (known as the Heineken Champions Cup for sponsorship reasons) is an annual rugby union tournament organised by European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR). It is the top-tier competition for clubs who compete in a pre ...

in which

Leicester Tigers Leicester Tigers (officially Leicester Football Club) are a professional rugby union club based in Leicester, England. They play in Premiership Rugby, England's top division of rugby. The club was founded in 1880 and since 1892 plays its hom ...

beat

Llanelli Scarlets The Scarlets () are one of the four professional Welsh rugby union teams and are based in Llanelli, Wales. Their home ground is the Parc y Scarlets stadium. They play in the United Rugby Championship and the European Rugby Champions Cup (which ...

13–12. Leicester Tigers once again played at City Ground when they were defeated 19-16 by

Racing 92 Racing 92 () is a French rugby union club based in suburban Paris that was formed in 2001 with the collaboration of the Racing Club de France and US Métro. They were called Racing Métro 92 between 2001 and 2015, when they changed the name ...

on 24 April 2016 in the semi-final of the

European Rugby Champions Cup The European Rugby Champions Cup (known as the Heineken Champions Cup for sponsorship reasons) is an annual rugby union tournament organised by European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR). It is the top-tier competition for clubs who compete in a pr ...

. The stadium hosted its first music concert when R.E.M. performed there in front of an audience of 20,000.

Proposed relocation

In 2007 the club announced plans to build a new stadium with a capacity of up to 50,000 in

Clifton Clifton may refer to: People * Clifton (surname) * Clifton (given name) Places Australia *Clifton, Queensland, a town ** Shire of Clifton *Clifton, New South Wales, a suburb of Wollongong * Clifton, Western Australia Canada * Clifton, Nova Sc ...

on the south-western outskirts of Nottingham, arguing that the cost of expanding the City Ground would be prohibitive, and that with £45m-£50m of funding from the public and private sectors a new ground could be built by 2014. The move was planned to coincide with the extension of the

Nottingham Express Transit Nottingham Express Transit (NET) is a tram system in Nottingham, England. The system opened to the public on 9 March 2004 and a second phase, that more than doubled the size of the total system, opened on 25 August 2015, having been initially ...

to the area and the expansion of the nearby A453 link to the

M1 motorway The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which ...

, promising a "dramatic new gateway" to the city, including additional housing and commercial development. The plan was opposed by local residents, however, and criticised by fans as an attempt to deflect attention from the fact the club had been relegated to League One. After the developers decided against proceeding a new proposal was announced in 2008 for a 50,000 seat "super stadium" costing £100m near the National Watersports Centre at

Holme Pierrepont Holme Pierrepont is a hamlet and civil parish located south-east of the city of Nottingham in Nottinghamshire, England. It is in the Gamston ward of the Rushcliffe local authority in the East Midlands region. The population of the civil parish ...

, to form part of England's 2018 FIFA World Cup bid. The club argued that the main stand at the City Ground could be developed to provide a capacity of 37,000, but that access problems would mean that the venue would never qualify to hold World Cup or other international matches. The new stadium would have required a new bridge to be built over the River Trent and extensive engineering to overcome the risk from its location on a

floodplain A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river which stretches from the banks of its channel to the base of the enclosing valley walls, and which experiences flooding during periods of high discharge.Goudi ...

, but was abandoned as it was felt it would face significant local opposition. Further development of the City Ground was ruled out in 2009 by Nottingham City Council, who owned the land the ground was built on, and in September a new plan was unveiled to build a 45,000 seater stadium for the 2018 World Cup close to the A52 at Gamston, with the club arguing that "exhaustive studies of the existing City Ground have shown it is impossible to transform the ground into a fully compliant FIFA stadium". The capacity of the new stadium was planned to be reduced to 38,000 with the removal of temporary seating after the World Cup. The proposal was hit by opposition from local residents and political wrangling, with

Nottinghamshire County Council Nottinghamshire County Council is the upper-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Nottinghamshire in England. It consists of 66 county councillors, elected from 56 electoral divisions every four years. The most recent electi ...

withdrawing support from the bid shortly before it was submitted, claiming that not enough consideration had been given to redeveloping the City Ground and objecting to the proposal to build 4,000 homes on greenbelt land. FIFA's technical requirements had been the driving force behind the proposal and the failure of England's World Cup bid in 2010 threw new stadium plans into doubt. After the 2012 takeover Forest's new owner

Fawaz Al-Hasawi Fawaz Mubarak Al-Hasawi (born 25 October 1968) is a Kuwaiti businessman and was the owner and chairman of Nottingham Forest Football Club. Biography Qadsia SC Between 2010 and 2012, Fawaz was president of Qadsia SC, one of the largest sporti ...

announced long term plans to build a new stadium away from the City Ground, but stated that the short term priority was to renovate and refurbish the existing ground. In December two new big screens were installed, one between the Trent End and the Brian Clough Stand and the other to the rear of the Lower Bridgford Stand, together with LED advertising boards around the pitch in a project costing more than £1m. In October 2015 the Main Stand was renamed in honour of Brian Clough's assistant manager Peter Taylor. Following issues with the ground's safety certificate, the capacity of the stadium was reduced to 24,357 ahead of the 2016–17 season. By the time of the Hasawis' sale of the club in 2017 the City Ground was criticised by the

Nottingham Post The ''Nottingham Post'' (formerly the ''Nottingham Evening Post'') is an English tabloid newspaper which serves Nottingham, Nottinghamshire and parts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire. The ''Post'' is published Monday to Saturday ...

for having "started to fall into a state of decay" and being "tired, dishevelled, sad and like nobody really cared any more". Refurbishment work was carried out in the summer of 2017 under new owner

Evangelos Marinakis Evangelos Marinakis ( el, Ευάγγελος (Βαγγέλης) Μαρινάκης, born 30 July 1967) is a Greek media mogul, shipowner, lyricist and member of the Piraeus city council. He is the owner of the football clubs Olympiacos in Greece ...

, including improved dressing rooms and new dugouts with cushioned seats, alongside more general maintenance work to the wider stadium. In 2019 the club secured a 250-year extension of their lease on the City Ground from Nottingham City Council, enabling them to move forward with redevelopment plans including the rebuilding of the Peter Taylor Stand, improvements to the Bridgford and Brian Clough Stands, and development of the wider Trentside area.

Ground redevelopment

On 28 February 2019 the club confirmed an extended lease on the City Ground, allowing it to proceed with plans to redevelop the stadium and surrounding area. Central to this will be the replacement of the current Peter Taylor Stand with a new 10,000-seater stand, and improvements to the Trentside area, Brian Clough and Bridgford Stands. The new Peter Taylor Stand will see the introduction of a museum, new club shop, executive boxes, and a range of hospitality lounge options and restaurants. The new, modern, state-of-the-art structure will see the City Ground's capacity become the highest in the East Midlands, reaching 38,000 after completion. The club was hopeful that building work would commence at the end of the 2019–20 season. However, the redevelopment plans were temporarily put on hold due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

. On 1 June 2021, Nottingham Forest submitted a revised planning application with residential development plans tweaked to appease planners. After a lengthy delay, on 28 July 2022, planning permission was granted by Rushcliffe Borough Council.

UEFA Euro 1996 matches

The following games were played at the City Ground during the opening phase of the UEFA

tournament.

Images

Notes and references

Bibliography

* * * * * * *

External links

The City Ground on NFFC's websiteVirtual Tour of The City GroundMatchday at the City GroundGoogle Maps Satellite Image Of The City Ground

{{UEFA Euro 1996 stadiums West Bridgford Tourist attractions in Nottinghamshire Sports venues in Nottingham Nottingham Forest F.C. UEFA Euro 1996 stadiums Football venues in England Premier League venues Sports venues completed in 1898 English Football League venues 1898 establishments in England