Ask Aitch ! - Capacity At The Nest

I recently received the following communication from life long Canary fan Tony Moore

Hi Aitch,
What was the capacity of the Nest ? I can't seem to find any reference as to how many it could actually hold (not necessarily very safely!!)

Well, Tony, like you I have never seen any official reference regarding the capacity at our old ground. Thinking about it, I guess there was no particular reason why any football stadium back in 1908 would have had a crowd limit. Obviously people stood up to watch, and there was no forward purchasing of tickets. It was therefore a question of a club waiting to see who (and how many) turned up on the day - and squeezing them in as best they could. Policing would have been almost non existent compared with later times, and as far as Norwich City were concerned travel to the game would almost certainly have been by foot or tram.

The Nest of course was also an unusual football ground, to say the least. Literally a football pitch laid out at the bottom of a pit. The attendance recorded for the very first game played there (a friendly against Fulham) was just over 3,000, but that was quite a way down on the gates that had been seen at Newmarket Road. Work on getting the ground ready for the new season had been rushed during the summer and improvements were ongoing. The crowd for the first league match against Portsmouth two weeks later grew to 6,700, and there were a couple of 9,000 crowds by the end of the season. The great thing about the old ground was the fact that there was lots of open space on the cliff running down the side of the stadium. This allowed fans to spread themselves out to all areas on days when a large crowd turned up. Health and safety eat your heart out ! It simply didn't exist in 1908 in the way we know it today.

Improvements did take place every year, and the club certainly did everything affordable to ensure everyone was housed safely. The Canaries played at the Nest for 27 years in all, and though crowds grew in size, it would be wrong to say it was bursting at the seams every week. There are famous pictures of supporters sitting on the stand roof in order to get a view of the match, but these occasions were exceptions. Often less than 10,000 attended. The problems really only started in the early thirties when Norwich for the first time challenged for the Division Three South title. It was then that every inch of space was used - legal, safe or otherwise. The straw that broke the camel's back was the FA Cup tie against Sheffield Wednesday in February 1935 when 25,037 made it into the Nest. Six months later the club had re-located to the larger Carrow Road - because they and the FA knew a disaster was possibly just about to happen.

So, we know the ground could and did hold just over 25,000 (though sometimes the devil in me does wonder whether there were even more in attendance that day, and the club were too scared to admit it to the authorities). But in terms of safe capacity, the figure was most certainly way below that.

Do you have a question regarding Norwich City Football Club history or trivia ? Maybe a memory that you can't quite piece together due to missing information ? The solution of course may already be on Sing Up The River End! but if you want to contact me either by the comment facility or e mail (address at bottom of the blog) I will try to publish you an answer.

Many questions are likely to be beyond me. So, if I don't know the answer, I will put out a request to see if any other readers can help. It's amazing what people know and remember and it may just give you what you are looking for.

.