Restoration - Week 3

Another manky week of weather and hard graft on the terraces of the old ground but delighted with the progress we have made this week. We have now removed all the moss and dirt and plants from 16 rows of terracing in this South-West corner terrace section and and polished each step, thus hopefully saving this terracing for another few years.Quite amazed at the results seen below as the past quite

literally reappears from the grime of 50 years of neglect as nature has taken over where once thousands of feet once stood shivering in the cold watching the great Celtic, Rangers, Kilmarnock, Dundee United, Hibernian and Hearts teams of the past take on Third Lanark.

Obviously there is still a huge task in front of us, but we are spurred on by the great reaction we have had from park users and the local community who can now once again stroll down the old terracing and for joggers to train 'old-skool' by sprinting up and down the cleared steps, as I have witnessed twice already this week! It is quite easy to visualise now how the ground will look once we have

restored all 5 surviving terrace sections and removed the trees which currently block the view of the pitch and are destroying the fabric of this terracing. A Herculean Effort still required but after 3 weeks of solid work the results are tangible at last. A month ago I stood on this pitch horrified

at the state of the ground, overgrown and unusable with our sporting past literally disappearing before my eyes. I started a partial restoration eight years ago and in that time it has gotten steadily worse.
The Council have kept the pitch in good order and the JJFA have transformed the Pavilion in the car park into a brilliant changing area and base for their club but the terraces and surrounding park has

become even more derelict than I remember, so it was then that I decided once again to start a thorough and complete restoration of Old Hampden Park and turn it back into a proper Victorian sporting stadium. My intention is to fix this old lady of football back into the only working completely Victorian football ground in the world, thus attracting more visitors and ensuring the ground is still there for future generations to come and wonder at. Cathkin Park Limited was set-up specifically to generate funds that will be ploughed into doing the work required over the next three years. We will be starting a Heritage Trail, covering New Cathkin/Old Hampden as part of that.We have also now made a start on clearing the surrounding pitch wall and as the photo above testifies, it has already made an impact. Onwards!