Claremont Road. Finally RIP.

This Charming Stand: Happier Times

On Thursday evening last week, the wonderful powers that be at Barnet Council voted in favour of a proposal to conclude negotiations for the sale of the freehold of Hendon’s old Claremont Road ground to Hendon Football Club Limited. On the face of it, this sounds like fantastic news. Hendon’s spiritual home being owned by Hendon Football Club Limited, just imagine the possibilities…. Oh, there’s a snag. Hendon Football Club Limited do not own Hendon Football Club anymore. It’s been a year or so since the transfer of ownership to the Supporters Trust and even longer since anyone involved with the limited company showed any interest in the Club beyond the resale value of the site for potential housing developments. There was a bitter irony that the timing of the vote came less than 18 hours before the publication of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee’s report into the governance of Football, which includes a recommendation that provision by the FA is made against the sale of grounds by owners unless it is in the club’s interests.

The ground has been lying empty for the best part of three years now, ever since the slightly underwhelming, anti-climactic and embarrassing 4-1 defeat at the hands of Wealdstone. The first I heard of the news was after coming through the turnstiles. It was all people were talking about – those with camera phones readily available were taking photos for the last time. There was a sense of disbelief amongst the fans, the moment that we all knew could come at any moment, but until then still seemed slight unlikely, was finally upon us. The game was crap, we were very crap (as we always are at home to the Stones) but for once, I didn’t really care. I lingered on for a while after the final whistle, not really wanting to leave the ground because I knew that once I did, I would find it very difficult to come back and see what had become of the place.

In my time as a Claremont Road regular, I don’t think I would ever have described the ground as cutting edge, modern or particularly attractive. Towards the end of the club’s time there, it had become slightly tumbledown if anything. What it did have though was character – something that is sorely lacking in nearly all newly built stadiums these days. There was something oddly comforting approaching the stadium on match days and seeing the 4 large floodlight pylons on top of the hill – clearly visible from the Northern Line, Thameslink, the A41, the North Circular, the bottom of the M1 – almost drawing me magnetically towards them. Particularly on cold winter evenings, with the prospect of a guaranteed extra time defeat in the Middlesex Senior Cup at the hands of Hanwell Town, it’s all strangely romantic to me. The covered terracing that covered the length of the pitch was famous throughout the country, and even when only the middle third was left standing after extensive demolition due to asbestos, it was one of the more impressive pieces of cover in the league. The height of the terracing gave you a great view over proceedings on the pitch from the top. I remember the first time I looked through the fence at the Park End and saw just how far the drop down to the hockey pitch was and being suitably awed. Ok, so it wasn’t quite the Camp Nou, but it was better than those grounds I’d been to as a kid where terracing amounted to two steps behind each goal. And I always found the rickety old wooden stand somewhat charming (Hitchin Town’s Top Field ground is another old favourite, and shares the wooden feel about it). It wasn’t especially big, and the view wasn’t always great, but it had a real homely feel about it.

I saw enough through reports and photos on the web to know that the ground was being left to fall apart. Squatters moved in and used the changing rooms to sleep in, the stand to hang their washing, the overgrown pitch for their dogs and kids to run around on. Then, before long to deter such dwellers, bulldozers reduced the charming wooden stand to nothing more than a huge pile of rotting timber. In the end, following the news of the Council’s decision last week, I made a decision of my own to take a bus along Claremont Road from Brent Cross, get off at the bus stop that still bears the football club’s name and take some photos.

Gone: After the bulldozers

As the 102 crossed the North Circular fly-over from Brent Cross towards Tilling Road I saw the floodlights still standing in the distance and a little murmur of excitement rose inside me again, just like old times. The bus turned onto Claremont Road, drove past the school and leisure centre, towards the edge of Clitterhouse Park. Up the hill and finally, the ground came into view. I was momentarily dumb-struck by what I saw. The entire site was boarded up by tall wooden fencing – the kind you see around all sites that have been earmarked for development. From my seat upstairs, I could just about see into the ground, the covered terracing still standing but with the roof falling off. The changing rooms also still there, backing onto the pavement but the stand no more. What was the pitch had become a barren wasteland and what I could see of the clubhouse looked like a bomb site. No more than an empty shell with windows broken, roof tiles removed. I couldn’t bring myself to ring the bell and take a closer look at the ground, so I put my camera away, and continued on to Golders Green.

Little more than another barren wasteland.

I don’t mind admitting that I felt a little heartbroken at what had been allowed to happen to a ground which gave me so many memories – both good and bad. International sides playing at Wembley had used the pitch for training, the ground had hosted Olympic qualifying games. In later years it was regularly featured on television, most notably staging numerous Phoenix From The Flames re-creations on Fantasy Football League with David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, the BBC women’s football drama Playing The Field, a TV Licensing advert and more infamously, as the base for Bravo TV’s Fash FC. If you mentioned you were a Hendon fan to many knowledgeable football supporters and the chances are that they would know Claremont Road in one guise or another. I can’t help thinking the old place deserved a better send off than it was able to be given.

Any lingering hopes that any fan may have held for a sensational and sentimental return to Claremont Road has now been extinguished forever with the decision made by Barnet Council last week and a huge piece of local footballing history is now lost. Hendon will survive, for the short to medium term at any rate due to the hard work and commitment of the comparative handful of fans who still attend week in week out. Vale Farm is a more than adequate ground at which to be staging home games for now but things don’t feel the same somehow. Crowds have dropped and matches generally lack atmosphere. That’s not to say that those who do attend games don’t care – I think if anything they care more. But perhaps priorities have shifted over the last four or five years. Rather than craving success above all else, the survival of the club is paramount and any success that comes with it is a distinct bonus. I couldn’t imagine what my Saturday afternoons would be like without Hendon or livescores – I don’t know if I could ever form such an attachment to another club were the club to disappear altogether.

Survival would be difficult enough to achieve at Claremont Road, I think it’s doubly so whilst ground sharing a comparatively fair distance away from the area with which the club shares its name. What the future holds for the club, I don’t know. A return to the Borough of Barnet is unlikely under the current administration, and that limits the clubs options severely. Perhaps it will come to having to make a choice between trying to sustain a club whilst ground sharing and maybe risk losing all identity with Hendon the place, or accepting that to return to somewhere near the area we all grew up watching football, we may need to accept a relegation or two. If push comes to shove, I know which I would prefer.

That though, is for another time. Tomorrow, we go to Harefield.