During my Maine Road 100 series of free articles commemorating the centenary of Manchester City’s former stadium I had hoped to post this image showing players playing head tennis on the directors’ car park with the Platt Lane Stand in the background. I couldn’t find my scan until this week sadly, so here it is now.
As a kid I used to sit in the Platt Lane and sometimes, if we didn’t walk through the corner tunnel, we’d climb those steps up to the back of the stand. You can see elsewhere (follow links below) stories about the old stand explaining how it was expanded, its age and so on, but the relevant bit for me today is the stair case(s). Back in the 70s they used to scare me. Climbing up or down I felt they were rickety and you could see through the gaps. I much preferred going down the tunnel.
Do you have memories of the old Platt Lane? Feel free to post them as comments here. Thanks.
For day 42 of my posts counting down to the centenary of Maine Road’s opening game I’ve posted a then and now style feature on Maine Road from the air.
The angles are not quite the same but I hope the following gives you enough of a feel to recognise the differences between Maine Road c.1946 and Maine Road about a year or so ago.
There are a few obvious consistencies between the two photos – mostly the old terraced streets which predated the building of the stadium. Maine Road itself is on the right and Kippax Street is the street that heads towards the terracing (from the bottom/Claremont Road) in the older image. In the newer image it leads into part of the new housing estate. Note the centre spot/circle in the new image. It appears further north than in the older image but that’s mostly the angle (having said that I’m not entirely convinced it’s in exactly the right spot – I’ve not yet compared actual plans but I guess the architects and planners did).
It’s nice to see that the old directors car park (top right) is now a school playground/facility. This seems appropriate as the players often used that car park as a training area during the week. It’s nice to see some continuity. A passageway, known as ‘Pink Passage’ for many years, existed between the directors car park and the external wall of the Platt Lane Stand – you can just about see it on the old photo going from the back of Thornton Road around the Platt Lane to Maine Road.
Notice how the Kippax/Popular Side terracing in the old photo is narrower the closer it gets to Thornton Road (top)… In a previous post I’ve talked about how they had to square off this terracing when they put a roof on in 1957 and how residents objected because they lost the Granada TV signal! See:
Here’s another aerial photo of Maine Road. This is 1971. Notice the away section of the Kippax built on stilts (to left of number 8). The directors car park is the space behind the Platt Lane (numbers 4 & 5) with the Pink Passage between the two walls of the car park and the Platt Lane Stand. Kippax Street itself (the street not the stand) is just visible on the far right (to the right of number 9 on the edge of the photo).
Maine Road aerial 1971 from Farewell To Maine Road
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:
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