Field_Mill

Field Mill

This article is about a stadium; for other uses, see Field mill (disambiguation)

Field Mill is a multi-use stadium in Mansfield, England. It is currently used mostly for football matches and is the home ground of Mansfield Town F.C.. The stadium holds 9,990.

History

Football has been played on the Field Mill site since 1861, making it one of the oldest football grounds in the country. Mansfield Town F.C. first started playing matches there in the 1919–20 season. The ground saw it first league football in 1933 following Mansfield's election to the football league.

The first grandstand was erected in 1922 along the length of the west side of the ground. The other three sides were initially mounds formed from pit ash. In 1929 a covered stand was built on the Bishop Street side and occupied a similar position to the Bishop Street Stand of today.

Concrete terracing was built in 1947 and in 1957 a stand on the North Side was added.

In the 1960s a new grandstand was purchased, for the west side, from Hurst Park Racecourse in Surrey. The cost was £30,000, however the final amount spent was considerably more than this once the cost of transportation and reconstruction had been taken into account. The stand was first used in 1966 but it was not fully completed until 1971.

Work began in July 1999 to completely modernise Field Mill. The North Stand, Quarry Lane End and West Stand were completely demolished and new stands built in their place, including a two tier stand on the west side of the ground. The 'new' ground was officially opened by John Prescott on 28 July 2001, six months after work had been completed.

As of August 2008 Field Mill is the third largest stadium in the English Football Conference with a capacity of 9,990, behind Oxford United's Kassam Stadium and Wrexham's Racecourse Ground.

Stands

West Stand - This is currently the largest stand at Field Mill which is also has two ties an upper and lower tier.

South stand (Family Stand) - This stand is situated behind the goal at Field Mill and the home supporters sit in here.

North Stand - This is where the away fans are seated. Safety officials also halved the crowd capacity at Field Mill after 400 more away supporters from Chesterfield got in with tickets. This has since been risen to around the 7,000 mark.

Bishop Street - This stand is not used anymore and there were plans to redevelop the stand into an all-seater one and TV cameras would also be here