The new Wembley stadium (1)

There is probably no man in Britain who cares less about football than me, but I cannot ignore the new Wembley stadium – often described as ‘the home of football’ – the keys of which which were today handed over by the contractors to the owners. This is because I live so close to the venue that, when the wind blew in the right direction, I could hear the roar of the crowd from the old stadium (apparently the new stadium is designed to swallow its own roar). Several times each week for a couple of years, I’ve seen the stunning 133-metre high, 315-metre long arch which is usually illuminated in the evening.
The original Wembley was put up in 1923. It took just 300 days and cost only £750,000 – but it lasted three-quarters of a century. When our son was young, we took him on a tour of the old stadium which included a walk up the ramp to the field with a sound recording of the famous roar. I never saw a football match there, but I attended several concerts, incuding the ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ one (it worked). It was not a particularly salubrious experience – but clearly the new stadium is going to be very, very different.
The new building is twice the size and four times as high as the old Wembley. It holds 90,000, making it one of the largest stadiums in the world. The old venue had under 400 lavatories, whereas the new one has no fewer than 2,618. It has been a long time coming – the original bid was in 2000 and the place should have opened in 2003, so it is four years late. Equally it has been an expensive business – in 2000, the cost was put at £326M, but the final figure was £798M.
I’m looking forward to visting the new stadium. I’ve bid for free tickets for a public open day next weekend and we’ve bought tickets for the first concert to be held there (George Michael in June). I’ll keep you posted.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 11:46 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Comments

  • alex
    March 10th, 2007 at 10:15 pm

    wow, so many figures to remember and be able to tell people around me…
    more interesting stories to tell…
    fancinating and loads of thanks, roger.

  • Mavis
    March 10th, 2007 at 11:35 pm

    As a football fan to get a ticket to Wembley to see your team play there was wonderful.
    Memories flooded back of 1985 Milk Cup Final – Black Cats played The Canaries.(we lost – own goal). But the singing and the crowd and the laughter.
    Hope the new one keeps the atmosphere.