Maine Road 100 – Day 28

It’s day 28 of my posts counting down to the centenary of Maine Road’s opening game. Today – that odd Main Stand roof replacement (no, not the white barrels, the earlier one!).

The original Main Stand rood was a traditional style roof with a central circular gable. Though it was huge (at the time of it’s construction it was claimed to be the largest roof at a club ground, it seemed quite pleasant. It wasn’t a cheap affair or particularly a problem but as the 1960s wore on the number of stanchions it had holding up the roof was seen as being an issue by the directors. They decided that they could no longer watch games with their view obstructed by stanchions and so they decided to replace the middle section with a new section that allowed the removal of the stanchions that blocked the directors’ views. They didn’t seem to care about the problems other fans may have experienced! You can read all about that and the other Main Stand roof developments in Farewell To Maine Road.

In the end only two stanchions were removed but the gable was lost forever and the strange raised section of the stand looked so odd. Here’s an image of the original roof from an aerial photo:

Note the Trumanns for Steel advert on the following image. Another iconic part of Maine Road. Also the floodlight in the Platt Lane corner.

The ‘second’ Main Stand roof appears on the following aerial photo from 1971. It’s numbered number 1 and you can see how odd it looks.

If you’d like to read more on the history of Maine Road, take a look at Farewell To Maine Road, which can be downloaded from this page:

Farewell To Maine Road – Part One

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