Harrison Park was the main public space for multiple games in this area of Edinburgh while one of Hearts’ early grounds and the site of an Edinburgh derby cup final can all be found here too
‘Old’ Tynecastle / Tynecastle Park
As has been covered in previous articles, Hearts had been in existence for around six years before they firt moved to the Gorgie area. Like many nascent Edinburgh teams they had first played on East Meadows before short stints at Powburn and Powderhall.
When they first moved to Gorgie they took out a lease on a venue known as Tynecastle Park, sometimes known as ‘Old’ Tynecastle following the renaming of the current stadium to Tynecastle Park in the late 2010s.
‘Old’ Tynecastle was on the other side of Gorgie Road to the current stadium and in the 1880s was in the heart of industrial Dalry which at the time was considered to be out of town. The ground was next to the railway line and the Caledonian Brewery on land now covered by Wardlaw Street, Wardlaw Terrace, and Wardlaw Park.
It is highly likely that this ground, like the Meadows and Powburn, was little more than a pitch with standing room around the perimeter although there was reportedly a small stand that the club took with them when they moved across Gorgie Road.
Because of the ground’s location Hearts would often stage back-to-back games, and ensure admission prices were cheaper than at Hibs for example.
For the grand opening of ‘Old’ Tynecastle, Hearts’ first team hosted Hanover, with their second string – possibly the so-called Valleyfield XI – taking on Lancefield on the same bill.
Nearly five years to the day after moving in to ‘Old’ Tynecastle, Hearts hopped across the road to their current home. With the city of Edinburgh rapidly expanding, the old ground gave way to tenements. The club managed to lease land on the other side of Gorgie Road from the Edinburgh Corporation, beating Bolton Wanderers 4-1 in a friendly to mark the opening. A crowd of 5,000 – 6,000 attended with special cars being put on from Register House to take spectators to the game.
The first league match was played in August 1890 when visitors Celtic ran out 5-0 winners.
There was also a cycle track around the perimeter of the pitch – but adverts for this sport referred to Tynecastle Grounds, rather than Tynecastle Park.
Bainfield
During the 1877/78 season Hearts and Hibs had five attempts at deciding the winners of the Edinburgh Football Association Cup.
The teams met at Mayfield on three occasions – February 9, February 16, and February 23 – with each game resulting in a draw. The first attempt finished goalless with 1-1 scorelines recorded in the second and third games.
When the rivals contested the game for a fourth time on April 6 1878, the football season was all but over. This is possibly why, rather than trekking out to Mayfield for a fourth time, the match was played at Bainfield in Merchiston.
Around 1,500 people turned out to watch, yes, another 1-1 draw. A fifth match was scheduled for April 20 at Powburn and although Hibs took the lead twice, Hearts ran out 3-2 winners.
At the time Bainfield House was owned by Thomas Gibson, who established the Gibson & Tait Bainfield Iron and Wire Works. Gibson Terrace was named for him, mainly because he developed it himself around 1870. He was also the last owner of Bainfield House before it was demolished for tenement housing.
The Iron Works lasted until the 1950s when a larger building was constructed for the Viewforth Works’ rubber hose factory.
Incidentally Fountainbridge Public Library, which can be found on the corner of Murdoch Terrace and Dundee Street was built in the 1890s using a bequest from publisher Thomas Nelson, who also had connections with the football pitches on the Meadows and at Parkside.
Dalry Park
This will be a confusing and no doubt vague entry, as I’m not 100 per cent sure a ground called “Dalry Park” ever existed in the late 19th century. That’s not to say there wasn’t anywhere known as such – the “Foot-Ball Club of Edinburgh” played in Dalry Park in the grounds of Dalry House until 1831 – but there was precious little open space in the same place in the 1880s and 1890s.
At the time, Tynecastle Park (the new one) was considered to be in the Dalry area, and one of the more prominent smaller teams, Dalry Albert, sometimes played there when Hearts hosted double-bill games in the 1880s. In the 1890s another local team, Dalry Primrose, also sometimes used Tynecastle Park as well as Harrison Park.
But an 1893 Evening News report lists a Dalry Albert game in the junior leagues taking place at Stubble Park, Tynecastle. In 1896, Dalry Primrose hosted a five-a-side tournament over two consecutive Saturdays at Artillery Park in Murrayfield – more on those grounds later.
However, this is where it gets confusing. A newspaper report in 1881 tells of a bit of a stushie at a public meeting over the apparent state of the park in Dalry.
Headlined “The Dalry Park”, the article from the Daily Review of November 30 1881 reads: “The Lord Provost’s Committee reported that the park at Dalry was now ready for games.
Mr Reid said he visited the park on the previous day, and from what he had seen it was the very opposite of being ready. He, therefore, desired to remit the matter back to the Lord Provost’s Committee to consider as to whether the conditions with regard to the park had been fulfilled by the proprietors.
Mr Clapperton said he had no objection to the remit, but the people had taken possession of the park already, and were playing in it.
Mr Robert White said the park was in a most unsatisfactory state, it being a perfect quagmire. The park had been thrust upon them, and he trusted the same would not be done again.
Bailie Hall said Mr White had no right to make such remarks. He had no more interest in the park than what Mr White had. The only justification for the place was to take the rude and barbarous game of football from the Meadows.
The subject was remitted back to the committee to see that the agreement with the proprietors be properly arranged.”
There are no further references to this park and no indication of where it might have been.
In April 1884, the Evening News carried a story headlined, “Proposed park for Dalry district”.
Part of the article states: “The Rev. W. M. Meredith reported that it had been ascertained that there was a suitable piece of ground, 19 acres in extent, lying north of the new houses at Tynecastle Road, which could be obtained, as the present lessee was willing to surrender his lease. The ground would be very suitable for the purpose, as it could be approached from Roseburn, Dalry, and Tynecastle, and was also easily accessible from West Fountainbridge and care might be taken to have free access from these roads.”
There was a reference to a Tynecastle Road in the 1881 census street index but there is also no reference to football taking place in this proposed new park, so our attention turns to the original Dalry Park of the 1881 article.
A notice in The Scotsman in 1877 made reference to feuing ground in Angle Park, ‘adjoining the Slateford and Tynecastle Roads’. Is it possible that the road we now know as Gorgie Road, then called Dalry Road, could in fact have been referred to as Tynecastle Road?
Any further supporting information is scant. When even Hearts’ first Tynecastle Park ground wasn’t worthy of inclusion on the map, it is little surprise that the ground at Dalry wasn’t considered important enough to label.
Stubble Park
Stubble in the agricultural sense refers to the ‘cut stalks of cereal plants left in the ground after grain is harvested’.
As discussed in other articles, not every football ground in the late 19th century was grass; some teams played on little more than cinders (such as Edinburgh Emmet) but Bainfield and Dalry Albert both played some games at a “Stubble Park, Tynecastle” in the early 1890s, before the teams merged to form Western.
Given the confusing nature of attempting to locate where the “Dalry Park” ground was, the inclusion of Tynecastle thankfully makes things much simpler.
Before Hearts moved to ‘new’ Tynecastle Park in 1886, there had been a piggery on the site of the new ground. There was also a dairy on the corner of what is now McLeod Street, roughly opposite the Tynecastle Arms, and just under the railway bridge towards Dalry Cemetery ws the Tynecastle Toll.
It was clearly farming land of sorts, which is one indication to the location of Stubble Park but the Iron Works, on Murieston Road, were known as the Albert Works.
It is therefore not unthinkable that Dalry Albert was a works team – bearing in mind that the area was known generally as Dalry.
That the area where Stubble Park was most likely located later turned into the Edinburgh Corporation’s City Roads Stone Depot suggests that this was indeed where the ground was found, and also offers a hint at the quality of the playing surface.
Victoria Park
Edinburgh Myrtle was a short-lived team who enjoyed a handful of successful years in the junior ranks in the early 1900s. They appear to have played at Harrison Park until 1901, when they moved to a ground on Russell Road known variously as Victoria Park, Myrtle Park, or simply Russell Road.
Was the team named for Myrtle Terrace, a stone’s throw away from Harrison Park? Or was that mere coincidence?
Leith Ivanhoe were the visitors for the opening match on September 7, 1901.
The access route looks to have been more or less the road leading up the side of what was then the Roseburn Rubber Works, currently the Royal Mail Sorting Office, towards the Haymarket train maintenance depot.
If you were to alight at the Murrayfield tram stop and walk down the stairs towards Roseburn Street, you would be passing over the southwestern corner of the old pitch.
Among the visitors to this short-lived pitch were Bonnyrigg Rose, West Calder Athletic, the original Edinburgh City, Musselburgh Fern, Newtongrange Star, Vale of Grange, Buckhaven United Granton Oakvale, Haddington Amateurs, Prestonpans Athletic, Arniston Rangers, Tranent United, Dalkeith Thistle, and Broxburn Athletic (1892-1912).
Victoria Park also hosted a match in aid of the Ibrox Disaster Fund in 1902 between teams from Castle Mills and the Fountain Brewery, with former Hearts ‘keeper Jock Fairbairn keeping goal for the Brewery XI.
In January 1904 an East of Scotland Cup fourth-round tie match between Myrtle and Norse Rovers had to be abandoned “owing to the hard state of the [Victoria Park] ground”. The Edinburgh Evening News reported a “large crowd had turned out”.
The ground was often used for minor cup semi-finals and finals, such as the Leith and District Cup semi-final between Granton Oakvale and St Clair in May 1904. The following month it played host to the East of Scotalnd cup final between Belford and Wemyss Violet.
Myrtle were Midlothian Junior Football League champions in 1902/03, winning nine of their ten games and scoring 40 goals in the process, conceding just 15.
Myrtle finished ahead of several teams still in existence today including Arniston Rangers, Dalkeith Thistle, Bonnyrigg Rose, and Newtongrange Star. In 1903/04 Arniston won the league with Bonnyrigg, Myrtle, and Dalkeith Thistle all finishing on 13 points.
Myrtle then dropped to seventh of nine in 1904/05 as Leith Ivanhoe pipped Newtongrange Star to the title. This was their last season of existence.
A handful of Myrtle players progressed to league football including Tommy Miller, who played for Falkirk, Chelsea, and Dundee Hibernian, and James Logan, who joined McCrae’s Battalion while at Raith Rovers after spells with St Bernard’s, Bradford City, Chesterfield Town, and Bradford Park Avenue. He went on to manage Raith on two occasions; between 1919-1926 and 1930-1933.
At least five other former Myrtle players went onto represent Falkirk including forward Donald Cameron; inside-right Robert Cameron; left-back James Clelland; centre-forward Robert Stalker, and right-half / centre-half James McPherson.
Myrtle Park remained in situ and was still hosting games into the 1920s, and appaers to have been mainly used by the Edinburgh Cinemas team for their Edinburgh Mid-Week League matches.
Westfield Park / Damhead Park
Curiously this ground only seems to have been in use between 1920 and 1924 and appeared mostly to host matches in the Edinburgh Mid-Week League and Lothian Amateur League.
It was situated on land currently covered by the Sainbury’s supermarket and car park at Murrayfield.
Damhead Amateurs played some matches here, including against Civil Service ‘A’ in September 1922 but the first recorded use of the park for a football game was the encounter between West End Athletic and Edinburgh Corporation Tramways in October 1920 while the following month there was a derby of sorts between Edinburgh Corporation Tramways and Leith Tramways at the same venue.
The site was later given over to allotments, a duty free warehouse, and a tramway depot. By the mid-20th century it had graduated to a bus depot and several bonded warehouses were demolished in the early 2000s to make way for the supermarket
An Evening News notice of June 4 1932 advertises the Royal Artillery Association’s annual picnic to be held in Westfield Park, which takes us onto another ground in the area.
Artillery Park
There are numerous references to Artillery Park in newspaper cuttings from around 1890 until 1920 or so, dealing with lower-level football, the coopers’ strike of 1908, and inspection of the Royal Army Medical Corps volunteers as well as coronation fetes and galas in 1902 and again in 1911.
As with many minor football grounds, Artillery Park does not appear labelled on any maps. There are some suggestions in the newspaper archives that Artillery Park was merely a colloquial name, while a notice alerting the public to one of the coronation fetes gives the ground its full name of ‘Mid-Lothian Artillery Park’.
Initially it seemed obvious that Artillery Park was space adjacent to Roseburn Park between Balgreen Road / Saughtonhall Drive and the Water of Leith – but if there’s one thing this project has taught me, it’s not to assume the obvious when it comes to football grounds and Edinburgh’s geographical history.
An in-depth search of the newspaper archives didn’t yield many more clues until a 1908 news item about the coopers’ strike which placed the Artillery Park in Roseburn and described the coopers as parading “via York Place, Princes Street, Maitland Street, and Haymarket Terrace” to the park. A later article from 1911 mentioned “Artillery Park and the two parks adjoining on the same lines” which could only be the two grassy areas we know today as Roseburn Park, while a third 1911 snippet about the inclement weather affecting the 1911 Coronation Fete and Floral Gala reported: “All along the street from the Park to Haymarket Station people were clustered in small groups waiting in expectation of the parade, but they were doomed to disappointment and after a while they also dispersed”.
Based on the large expanse of ground we know was located next to the present-day Roseburn Park plus the geographical clues, it seems likely that Artillery Park was found between Balgreen and the Water of Leith.
Perhaps the other giveaway to the ground’s location is the absence of any mention of football games beyond the 1910s. By 1932/33 the Saughtonhall housing was already in place and streets such as Saughtonhall Avenue, Baird Terrace, Riversdale Road and Saughtonhall Grove had been built on the site of the ground.
Before giving way to housing Artillery Park had hosted some local cup matches including ties in the Leith and District Cup, and the Simpson Shield.
Roseburn Park
Although there is very little evidence to suggest much organised football took place here, there are references to football fields being in use in the park.
The park was mainly used for cricket but there is a note in The Scotsman of Friday July 20, 1923 that specifies football games may take place in Roseburn Park West, which is presumably the smaller section due north of the Polo Ground.
Harrison Park
Harrison Park was, like the Meadows, Queen’s Park, Stockbridge Park, and Inverleith, used for numerous games owing to the availability of several pitches allowing for games to be staged concurrrently.
It was also used for cricket but the earliest recorded games to take place there was in May 1887 with McDougal Star beating Dundee Star 2-0. However, in the same report, a team named Harrison Swifts defeated Portland Star 4-1 with the latter apparently also drawing 0-0 with Fountain Star, and Dundee Star lost another game at Harrison Park 3-1 against Auckland.
Given that Dundee Terrace led straight to the park, and Fountainbridge wasn’t too far away, it’s not unthinkable that these were little more than groups of young men from the surrounding areas who wanted to play football. Further reports of matches played at Harrison Park back this up – Merchiston Star, Viewforth, Fountain Athletic. Bainfield and Rosehill were also based in the vicinity.
Such was the popularity of the ground for numerous games that in 1908 there was newspaper discussion that Thomas Gibson (who established Gibson & Tait Bainfield Iron and Wire Works near the Bainfield ground) was willing to sell the club house erected in Saughton Park for the Scottish National Exhibition and re-build it in Harrison Park.
Matches were played here up until the early 1930s – St Cuthbert’s Athletic faced off against Corinthians at Harrison Park in November 1933 in the Mid-Week Amateur League First Division while Edinburgh Butchers took on St Margaret’s at the same venue a year earlier – but like the other public parks in the capital, the standard of matches was to the lower end of the pyramid.
Factor’s Park
This small venue was located on the corner of Balgreen Road and Gorgie Road, just across from Saughton Hall, and certainly at one point was the home ground of Castle Mills.
Factor’s Park was the name given to the local area but also to the ground, with the first recorded instance of a game taking place there given as May 1923, when Shaftesbury met Dalry Albert in the semi-final of the Patrick J. Ford Cup. Shaftesbury also took on Bruce Peebles Welfare Club in the last four of the Moir Association competition later that same month.
It mainly hosted junior and juvenile matches as well as a number of minor cup finals including the Master Grocers’ Cup final between St Cuthbert’s Athletic and S.M.T. Thistle in April 1932.
The park was also used by the Boys’ Brigade for annual prize-giving events and inspections.
One of the last recorded matches to be played here took place between Civil Service Strollers and Burntisland Shipyard, with the game abandoned with 12 minutes remaining after the Fife team took issue with the referee’s decision not to award them ‘what appeared a legitimate goal’.
Saughton Park
One of few grounds in this area to still host football in the 21st century , Saughton Park was opened in 1904 and even before the official opening was being talked about for football.
During the Scottish National Exhibition of 1908, Arniston Rangers played Rosebery FC here while the finals of the Edinburgh School Board Cup and Inspectors’ Cup were held here the same week.
As it was a public park there was no one team that called Saughton ‘home’ as such.
Stevenson Drive, which runs along the north side of Saughton Park today, used to be a tree-lined boundary separating the athletic ground and the southern half of the park from the golf course on the northern half.
The links disappeared when Stevenson Drive was built and subsequently the Whitson streets.
Lothian Thistle Hutchison Vale play their home games at the Saughton Enclosure.
Saughtonhall
A stone’s throw away from Saughton Park was the similarly-named Saughtonhall Park, sometimes known as Saughtonhall Mains or simply Saughtonhall.
The ground was used for matches in the amateur ranks, with Civil Service Strollers, St Cuthbert’s F.P., Trust Amateurs, and Murrayfield Amateurs all played matches here in the 1930s.
Despite the amount of building that has taken place in the area, the park itself has remained largely unchanged since the mid-19th century.
Stenhouse Mills
In their formative years, Civil Service Strollers played at a ground in Stenhouse but it wasn’t located on any maps – as with numerous clubs this was most likely because the club and / or ground was not considered high profile enough to be included.
The Stenhouse greyhound racing stadium was built on the site of Strollers’ first ground and given the popularity of dog-racing the stadium began to crop up on later 20th century maps.
Strollers were effectively made homeless when the racing stadium was created, with the authorities claiming that football would interfere with racing arrangements. The team temporarily relocated to Wood’s Park in Portobello before moving back west to Pinkhill.
Curiously the space was used for Highland Games gatherings and athletics events in the late 19th and early 20th century – as was Tynecastle Park:
Scotland's ghost grounds 
Wonderful article. You really get a sense of a football fever gripping industrial working class areas back in the late 19th/early 20th century. Matches were played wherever there was grass – and also sometimes where there was none!
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