Port Vale’s Old Rec stadium was opened in September 1913. We take a look at how it was reported in the local media.
About the Old Rec
The Old Recreation Ground was situated in Hanley and was Port Vale’s ground from 1913 to 1950. The Valiants moved to the stadium from the Athletic Ground in Cobridge. It was a basic ground with no toilets while the dressing rooms were in notoriously poor condition. After the club suffered financial difficulties in 1943 in a move which proved to have huge consequences. In 1950, the council decided to erect a shopping centre on the ground forcing Vale to move to their current stadium – Vale Park in Burslem.
Record gate
The biggest attendance at the ground was a derby game against Stoke City in 1920 which saw 22,697 attend. Unfortunately, for Vale fans it ended in defeat.
The mystery of Vale’s financial approach
One of the enduring mysteries of the move to Vale Park is the fateful sale of the ground to the council. It came because the club’s chairman, Mayor Huntbach had died and the club needed to repay £3,000 of loans to his family. The Valiants did so by selling the Old Rec to the council for £13,500. The council’s decision to evict the club then nearly bankrupted the Vale as they were forced to raise £50,000 for the new Vale Park ground. This was done by fundraising which raises the question – why didn’t they simply fundraise the £3,000 to Huntbach’s family in the first place?
A tiny portion of the stadium lives on
We’ve covered this in another feature but the corner stand between the Railway and Hamil contains a piece of the Old Rec ground. When Vale were developing the Vale Park stadium, finances were tight and there was little money to build anything other than the vast terracing without any shelter. As a result, the club took the Popular Stand from the Old Rec stadium and erecting it at the Bycars End (the club did a similar thing decades later when re-erecting Chester’s former grandstand at the Hamil End). Here are some photos of the re-assembled Popular Stand:
In the 1990s, the Bycars End was redeveloped so the Popular Stand structure was mostly removed – apart from a small section in the corner. Now well over a hundred years old, it still stands today above the scoreboard:
Contemporary adverts and reports on the opening of the Old Rec…
One consequence of the move to Burslem was vacating the city centre in favour of a move to the relative outpost of Hamil Road. This was reflected in a drop in attendances for the 1950-51 season. Vales financial position would have been grave indeed were it not for the sale of Ronnie Allen and Bill McGarry which raised in excess of £30,000. Moving grounds just after the war was a huge risk given that building materials were in short supply and the vision of a 75,000 capacity seems bizarre given Vale averaged less than 10,000 in their last year at Hanley. The size of the stadium presents maintenance and financial challenges to the present day.