Lost Stadiums

White City Stadium (originally known as The Great Stadium) was built for the 1908 London Olympic Games and is often seen as the precursor to the modern all-seater stadium.

The 1908 Olympics were all set to take place in Rome but when Mount Vesuvius erupted devastating Naples, funds were desperately re-directed to the cause. As a result Italy could no longer afford to host the Games and London stepped in, building White City in just 10 months. The distance of the modern marathon (26 miles and 385 yards) was fixed at these Games and is commemorated by a plaque listing the medals won by each participating country and the names of all medal-winning athletes at the Games

When opened it was the largest stadium in the world seating 68,000 people with a capacity to hold up to 150,000. It was the first purpose built Olympic venue ever and boasted running and cycling tracks, a swimming pool as well as a pitch for football and hockey. Alongside athletics, it hosted many varied events over the years, including speedway, stock car racing, greyhound racing, boxing, rugby league and American football
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The record attendance at the stadium actually occured during a greyhound meeting when it hosted the sport's premier event, the English Greyhound Derby in 1939, with 92,000 spectators attending. The stadium was primarilly used for greyhound racing during its existance, with huge crowds continuing to attend during the 1940-50s.

The inclusion on this list as a 'football stadium' is somewhat contentious as, much like the modern Olympic Stadium, it was never designed for use as a football stadium, but it did breifly get used for that very purpose on a few occasions, so is deserving of a mention

The stadium was first used by Queens Park Rangers for football in 1912 while the club were playing in the Southern League.

Having already played at thirteen grounds in their twenty year existence, the club moved to the ground full-time in 1931, with the first league game being played on 5th September, a 3-0 defeat to Bournemouth in front of just 19,000 spectators. At the time the ground had a capacity of 80,000. Although White City Stadium had better facilties and a much greater capacity than Loftus Road, the distance from the pitch due to the running track meant that attendances were very low (averaging around 10,000 or less) and the atmosphere was almost non-exsistant. QPR returned to Loftus Road in 1933.

Thirty years later QPR returned to White City a second time for the 1962-63 season. At this time the stadium held 60,000, of which only 11,000 was seated. Again, however, the experiment proved unsuccessful and the club played its last match at White City on 22 May 1963, a 3-1 defeat against Coventry City in front of a paltry 3,245 spectators .

The highest attendance QPR managed across their two spells at White City was 41,097 when they played Leeds United in an F.A Cup 3rd round match in 1932. QPR played 65 games at the stadium in total winning 31 of them.

Football continued to be played at the stadium, most notably during the 1966 World Cup when a game between Uraguay and France was forced to be played there due to the owners of Wembley refusing to cancel a regular greyhound meeting. Despite the failed attempts to make use of the stadium as a football ground, White City continued to provide a home for greyhound racing, speedway and athletics before its final closure in 1984.

The site is a short distance from the BBC Television Centre and was bought by the BBC, who opened a collection of buildings known as BBC White City in 1990. White City One housed most of the BBC's current affairs, factual and learning programmes, with shows such as Panorama, Watchdog and Top Gear being produced there.

Sadly the site has once again been left abandoned when the BBC vacated White City One in March 2013, with plans for the buildings to either be demolished, or converted into a University campus.

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It's a shame we can't build a new stadium here. Location wise, it would be the perfect site for us.