Craven Cottage – London's Oldest Ground

Craven Cottage is a historic football stadium in Fulham, London, home to Fulham FC since 1896 and famous for its 1905 Cottage Pavilion built after the architect forgot changing rooms in his plans. Designed by Archibald Leitch, the pavilion still houses team dressing rooms today. The ground also features a plane tree in the Putney End corner, making Craven Cottage the only British senior football stadium containing a tree.

London · from the walk “The Beautiful Game: London's Football Trail” · audio ~3 min · Generated

Craven Cottage, Stevenage Road, Fulham, London SW6 6HH

Why was the Cottage Pavilion built at Craven Cottage?

Take a look around you. This is Craven Cottage... a football stadium in Fulham, West London, that has been home to Fulham Football Club since eighteen ninety-six. But the story of this patch of land by the Thames goes back Centuries before anyone ever kicked a ball here.......... The surrounding areas were once woods which made up part of Anne Boleyn's hunting grounds. That's right... the doomed queen of Henry the Eighth rode horses through these very woods in the fifteen hundreds. In seventeen eighty, William Craven, the Sixth Baron Craven, built a cottage in this wooded area — and that's where the name comes from.......... Now here's where it gets fascinating for literary fans. The Cottage was lived in by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote The Last Days of Pompeii. There are lots of rumours about various famous people, including Florence Nightingale, Arthur Conan Doyle, and even Queen Victoria herself, living in the cottage, but there's no real proof!......... But what about the cottage you can actually See inside the ground today? Here's the brilliant part. The Cottage Pavilion dates back to nineteen oh five, built by renowned architect Archibald Leitch. The reason it was built was due to an oversight in the Stevenage Road Stand, as Leitch had forgotten to accommodate changing rooms in his final plans. So they had to build an entire cottage just so players could get changed! Today, the Cottage still houses dressing rooms for the home and visiting teams, along with the Head Coach's matchday office, a players' lounge, and a balcony from where guests of the players watch matches.......... And here's a story that could have changed English football Forever. In the early nineteen tens, Fulham director Henry Norris offered to pay off Woolwich Arsenal's debts, but in return insisted that Fulham should merge with the top-flight outfit, and the newly-created Fulham Arsenal would play its home matches right here at Craven Cottage. Norris' plan was blocked by the Football League. Imagine that... Arsenal might have been playing Here, on the banks of the Thames, instead of at Highbury and later the Emirates!......... Now, look toward the corner of the ground. The original Craven Cottage site was covered in woodlands. One plane tree survives today in a corner of the Putney End, the sole tree to be found in any British senior football stadium. A living relic of the ancient forest that was here before the beautiful game even existed.......... On Boxing Day nineteen sixty-three, Craven Cottage was the venue of one of the fastest hat-tricks in the history of the English Football League, completed in less than three minutes by Graham Leggat, helping Fulham beat Ipswich ten to one.......... The Riverside terracing was infamous for the fact that fans occupying it would turn their heads annually to watch The Boat Race pass — probably the Only ground in world football where supporters would stop watching the match to watch rowing instead. That's Craven Cottage for you... a place where Tudor queens, forgotten novelists, and the beautiful game all share the same patch of earth by the river.

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