London – Merton (Borough of) – Site of Wimbledon’s Plough Lane Stadium

Clicking on the above dual map makes it a more viewable size and it shows where Wimbledon’s football ground stood until relatively recently. It’s where the cursor is on the map and not the Plough Lane Stadium, which is where the club is now. The football team became quite notorious in the 1980s when they played at the original Plough Lane site, but the ground proved difficult to upgrade to meet new safety requirements of the time.

This is what the football stadium looks like now. The old stadium, which was used by the football for first team matches between September 1912 and May 1991, was finally demolished in 2002. Safeway had wanted to build a supermarket on it, but the council faffed about a bit, so the project got delayed and then cancelled. A new more recent project has seen a large housing development built on the site of the former stadium.

To mark the site of the former ground, this sculpture was placed on the corner of Plough Lane and Durnsford Road in 2010.

The club’s crest is visible on the back of the sculpture, which was designed by Sam Burford. I’m not sure that I really understand what the whole sculpture is all about, but it’s useful that the site of the former stadium is marked.