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A Picture Gallery Of Wembley Stadium

Wembley Stadium - the most famous stadium in the world! Although now somewhat altered and neglected it was, originally, the largest and one of the most functional yet comfortable and beautiful buildings of its kind in the world. Work started on it in 1922 and it took 5,000 men just 300 days to build it! At least one grandson of one the original builders still works there to this day!

The stadium covers six acres in size and was originally built to hold over 125,000 people at any one time. Subsequent legislation forbidding standing spectators cut this capacity by about a third however. Its outer wall is the same height as that of the Biblical city of Jericho's and over half a mile in circumference! Designed to reflect in part the grandeur of the Coliseum of Rome this wall was perforated with thirty-seven arches, each the height of a three-storey building. 

The most recognizable feature of the stadium, though, are the Twin Towers. They stand 126 feet tall atop a hill already 110 feet high and command spectacular views across the whole of the London basin - you can easily see across the Thames to Crystal Palace and the North downs. Between them these Towers absolutely dominate the local skyline!

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Also Note: All images are copyright but permission is granted for their downloading and use on a personal, non-commercial basis only. These images may also be transferred to a third party as long as their copyright is acknowledged and these conditions of use subsequently imposed. Any parties interested in commercial exploitation of these and the club's other words and images should direct all enquiries in the first place to the club itself at the above address.

More pictures coming soon!

The F.A. Cup's Amateur Beginnings

Wembley Stadium is most popularly attached in the public mind to the F.A. Cup Final - and with good reason. Since its completion the Cup Final has always been played there. However this obscures the fact that the Cup has a history all of its own. Carry on scrolling down to read about it. 

The Football Association was founded by eleven amateur clubs in 1863. The Challenge Cup Competition, as it was then called, began a few years later in the 1871/72 season. Fifteen amateur clubs entered the competition, they were:-

All since long gone!

The two clubs that made it to the very first final were the Wanderers and the Royal Engineers, with the Wanderers winning one, nil. The game was played at Kennington Oval (a cricket ground nowadays). This competition soon become very popular with both the clubs and their spectators. By the 1881/82 season there were 73 clubs vying for the Cup. This was the last year that an amateur club won it.

The second final was played at the, then famous, Lillie Bridge ground but by the third it was decided to continue using the Oval. For the next eighteen years, until 1892, this ground was the F.A. Cup Final's "home" - the Wembley of its day. In 1893 the final was held at Fallowfield in Manchester (where Wolverhampton Wanderers won). The year after it was held in Everton (when Notts County managed to take the Cup home). There then followed a period of twenty years when the final was played at Crystal Palace. This practice ended in 1914 when the finals were shared between Chelsea's ground and that of Manchester's Old Trafford.    

After the building of Wembley Stadium the F.A. Cup Final stopped moving around and settled down there. Wembley became the home of the F.A. Cup Final - with a very special set of unique traditions being built up around it.

The F.A. Cup Winners

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